The Political Philosophy o f Bakunin

SCIENTIFIC ANARCHISM
TH E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF

B k U U l U SCIENTIFIC ANARCHISM

C O M P I L E D AND E D I T E D BY G. P. M axim off

PREFACE BY B E R T F . H O S E L IT Z
T HE U N IV E R S IT Y OF C H ICAG O

IN T R O D U C T I O N B Y RU DO LF ROCKER

B IO G R A P H IC A L S K E T C H OF B A K U N IN BY M AX N ETTLAU

THE FREE PRESS OF GLENCOE

C O L L IE R -M A C M IL L A N L IM IT E D , L o n d o n
Copyright 1953 by The Free Press, a Corporation

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or by any information, storage and retrieval system, without per
mission in writing from the Publisher.

F IR S T F R E E PR ESS P A P E R B A C K E D IT IO N 1964
For information, address:
The Free Press of Glencoe
A Division of The Macmillan Company
The Crowell-Collier Publishing Company
60 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y., 10011

Collier-Macmillan Canada, Ltd., Toronto, Ontario

D E SIG N E D B Y SID N E Y S O L O M O N
Contents

PAGE

Publishers Preface, by bert f . hoselitz 9

Introduction, by rudolf rocker i7
Mikhail Bakunina Biographical Sketch, by max nettlau 29

PART I PH ILO SO PH Y

1 The W orld-Outlook 53
2 Idealism and Materialism 60
3 Science: General Outlook 68
4 Science and Authority 77
5 Modem Science Deals in Falsities 81
6 Man: Animal and Human Nature 83
7 Man as Conqueror of Nature 88
8 Mind and W ill 92
9 Man Subject to Universal Inevitability 98
10 Religion in Mans Life 105
11 Man Had to Look for God W ithin Himself 114
12 Ethics: Divine or Bourgeois Morality 120
13 Ethics: Exploitation o f the Masses 128
14 Ethics: Morality of the State 136
15 Ethics: T ru ly Human or Anarchist Morality 146
16 Ethics: Man the Product o f Environment 152
17 Society and the Individual 157
18 Individuals Are Strictly Determined 164
19 Philosophy of History 169

PA R T I I C R IT IC IS M OF E X IS T IN G S O C IE T Y

1 Property Could Arise O nly in the State 179

2 The Present Economic Regime 182
3 Class Struggle in Society Inevitable 188
4 Checkered History o f the Bourgeoisie 193
 Contents
5 Proletariat Long Enslaved *99
6 Peasants Day Is Yet to Come 203
7 The State: General Outlook 206
8 The Modem State Surveyed 210
9 Representative System Based on Fiction 217
10 Patriotisms Part in Mans Struggle 225
11 Class Interests in Modem Patriotism 232
12 Law, Natural and Invented 237
13 Power and Authority 248
14 State Centralization and Its Effects 256
15 T he Element o f Discipline 259

PART H I T H E S Y S T E M OF A N A R C H IS M

1 Freedom and Equality 263

2 Federalism: Real and Sham 271
* 3 State Socialism Theories Weighed 277
4 Criticism of Marxism 283
5 Social-Democratic Program Examined 289
6 Stateless Socialism: Anarchism 294
7 Founding of the Workers International 301
8 Economic Solidarity at Its W idest 308
9 W hat the W orkers Lack 315
10 Fatherland and Nationality 324
11 Women, Marriage, and Family 326
12 Upbringing and Education 327
13 Summation 338

P A R T i v T A C T IC S AND M ETH O D S OF R E A L IZ A T IO N

1 The Rationale o f Revolutionary Tactics 351

2 Economic Problem Underlies A ll Others 358
3 Socio-Economic and Psychological Factors 367
4 Revolution and Revolutionary Violence 72
5 Methods o f the Preparatory Period 379
6 Jacobins o f 1870 Feared Revolutionary Anarchy 389
7 Revolution b y Decrees Doomed to Failure 397
8 Revolutionary Program for the Peasants 404
9 On the Morrow of the Social Revolution 409
Source Bibliography 416
Source N o t 417
Index 425
 Publishers Preface

a n a r c h i s m is a very old doctrine. One would be tempted

P h il o s o p h ic a l
to say that it is as old as the idea o f government, but clear evidence is
lacking which would support such an assertion. Still, we possess texts more
than two thousand years old which not only describe human society with
out government, force, and constraining law, but which designate this
state o f social relations as the ideal of human society. In beautiful, poetic**
words Ovidius gives a description o f the anarchist utopia. In the first book
of his Metamorphoses Ovidius writes about the golden age which was
without law and in which, with no one to use compulsion, everyone of
his own will kept faith and did the right. There was no fear o f punishment,
no legal sanctions were engraved on bronze tablets, no mass o f supplicants
looked, full o f fear, upon its avenger, but without judges everyone lived
in security. The only difference between the vision of the Roman poet and
that o f modem philosophical anarchists is that he placed the golden age
at the beginning o f human history, whereas they put it at the end.
But Ovidius was not the first inventor o f these sentiments. He repeated
in his poetry ideas which had been cherished for centuries. Georg Adler,
a German social historian, who in 1899 published an exhaustive and well-
documented study o f the history of socialism, showed that anarchist views
were certainly held by Zeno (342 to 270 B.C.), the founder o f the Stoic
school of philosophy.1 There were doubtless strong anarchist sentiments
among many of the early Christian hermits, and in the politico-religious
views o f some, for example, Karpocrates, and his disciples, (second century
A .D .), these feelings seem to have held a strong and perhaps predominant
position. Such sentiments lingered on among some of the fundamentalist
Christian sects o f the Middle Ages and even the modem period.
Max Nettlau, the indefatigable historian of anarchism, also has gone
over the field and lists a series of works composed in the two centuries
before the French Revolution which contain strong libertarian views or
are even outspokenly anarchist.2 Among the most important French works

1 Georg Adler, Geschichte des Soztalismus tend Kornmumsmus von Plato bis zur Gegen-
wart, Leipzig, 1899, pp. 46-51.
*Max Nettlau, Uer Vorfriibling der Anarchie, Berlin, 1915, pp. 34-66.

9
 io Preface
of this period are Etienne de la Boties Discours de la servitude volontaire,
which was composed about 1550, but remained unpublished until 1577;
Gabriel Foignys Les aventures de Jacques Sadeur dans la dcouverte et
le voyage de la Terre Australe, which appeared anonymously in 1676; a
few short essays by Diderot; and a series of poems, fables, and stories by
Sylvain Marchal which saw the light of day in the two decades immedi
ately preceding the Revolution. Similarly, during the same period anar
chist ideas can be traced in England, where, as in France, they are
expressed usually b y representatives of the most radical wing of the rising
middle class. Thus anarchist views can be found in some o f the writings
of Winstanley, and it is well-known that the young Burke in his Vindica
tion of Natural Society (1756) presents an ingenious argument in favor
of anarchy, even though the work was intended as a satire.
But all these, and many other writings of this earlier period, display
one of two characteristics which make them differ profoundly from later
anarchist works. T hey are either openly utopian as, for example, the books
of Foigny or Marchal, or they are political tracts directed against some
directly felt abuse by a ruler or a government, or aiming at the attainment
o f greater freedom of action in a particular political constellation. T h ey
contain not infrequently a discussion o f political theory, but this is inci
dental and not the major object of the work.
As a systematic theory, philosophical anarchism may be said to have
begun in England with William Godwins Enquiry Concerning Political
Justicey which appeared in 1793. Godwins anarchism, as well as that o f
his more immediate predecessors, and o f Proudhon some fifty years later,
is the political theory of the most radical branch o f the small bourgeoisie.
In the English Revolution of 1688 and the French Revolution of 1789 the
bourgeoisie had broken the monopoly o f political power held previously
by the crown and the aristocracy. Although post-revolutionary govern
ments were still influenced strongly b y the landed nobility and the bureau
cracy (which remained, for long, a noblesse de robe)y the more powerful
and wealthy middle class families gradually became associated by marriage
or through political alliances with aristocratic circles; and provided the
government abstained from excessive interference in its economic affairs,
the haute bourgeoisie was willing to support it. But since it demanded and
obtained greater freedom in economic matters, it was instrumental in grad
ually abolishing or making ineffective the old guild organizations and
other protective, quasi-monopolistic associations which had survived from
the Middle Ages and which had become a fetter on the full development
even of small-scale trade and manufacture. B y the end of the eighteenth
century in England the manufacturer who had a few hands in his employ,
the small shopkeeper, the petty trader, formed a mass of independent
entrepreneurs. B y the middle o f the nineteenth century in France, the
artisan and craftsman, the peasant who owned a lot just large enough to
 ii Preface
support himself and his family, also had acquired the nature o f independent
small entrepreneurs. A ll these men had only a puny amount o f capita! at
their disposal; they were exposed to the fresh winds o f competition, un
protected by guilds or other cooperative organizations; and were relegated
at the same time to a state of political impotence. T h ey received no bene
fits from the government, and whatever legislation they felt, appeared to
be designed for the protection of large-scale property, the safeguarding of
accumulated wealth, the maintenance of monopoly rights by the Urge
trading companies, and the support of established economic and political
privilege.
T h e more moderate elements among this group supported the trend
towards parliamentary reform, the more radical ones followed Paine and
later the Chartists, but a few of the most radical intellectuals held anarchist
ideas. T h e distance beween Godwins anarchism and the liberalism o f some
of his contemporaries was not very wide. Basically the tw o doctrines grew
out o f the same stream o f political traditions, and the main difference
between them is that anarchism was the more logical and consistent deduc
tion from the common premises of utilitarian psychology and the concep
tion that the greatest happiness o f all and mutually harmonious social
relations can be achieved only if every person is left free to pursue his
self-interest. T o be sure, the liberals, following John Locke, regarded prop
erty as an outflow of natural right, and hence stipuUted the maintenance
of a political power monopoly in the hands of the government to safe
guard the security of property and life against internal and external attack.
But to this the anarchists replied: The government protects the property o f
the rich; this property is theft; do away with the government and youll
do away with big landed and industrial property; in this way youll create
an egalitarian society of small, economically self-sufficient producers, a
society, moreover, which will be free o f privilege, o f class distinctions,
and in which government will be superfluous because the happiness, the
economic security, and the persona! freedom o f each will be safeguarded
without its intervention.
It is of the utmost importance to understand that the anarchist doc
trine as propounded b y Godwin, Proudhon, and their contemporaries was
the apotheosis of petty bourgeois existence; that its ultimate ideal was the
same as that o f Voltaires Candidet to cultivate ones garden; and that it
ignored or opposed large scale industrial or agricultural enterprises; and
that it, therefore, never became a political theory which could find real
sympathy and enthusiastic support among the masses o f industrial workers.
It was the radical extension o f the liberalist doctrine which regarded the
freedom of each as the highest political good and the responsible reliance
on ones conscience as the highest political duty. It was thus based on a
political philosophy which is closely associated with the rise of middle-
class, liberal, anti-socialist, political movements. Yet Bakunin, as is well
 i 2 Preface
known, regarded himself as a socialist, obtained admission as a leading
member to the International Workingmens Association, struggled for the
control o f this organization, and counted among his followers and adherents
many genuine proletarians.
H ow and w hy did anarchism become associated so closely, around the
middle of the nineteenth century, with socialism, a political philosophy
which championed the aspirations of a different social stratum and which
had appeal for so different a class of men? That the bedfellowship between
anarchists and socialists was never very happy needs no reiteration. And
yet, in spite of repeated conflicts, mutual incriminations, and bitter abuse,
anarchists and socialists teamed up with one another again and again, so
that by the end of the nineteenth century anarchism was quite commonly
regarded as the most radical branch of socialism. The reason for the close
association between socialists and anarchists can not be found in the simi
larity of their basic doctrines, but alone in the revolutionary strategy
common to both of them.
The political philosophy o f Godwin and Proudhon expressed, as already
stated, the aspirations of a part of the petty bourgeoisie. W ith the consoli
dation of capitalism in western and central Europe during the nineteenth
century, with the slow extension of the suffrage, and with the gradual re
treat of unconditional laissez-faire and the adoption by the state of added
responsibilities towards its citizens, increasingly larger portions of the mid
dle class became staunch supporters of the existing political order, and
anarchism became more and more a philosophy held only b y a small mar
ginal group of intellectuals. This development had the result that anarchist
theory became more diffuse and at the same time more radical than
it had been. Instead o f writing fat tomes, as had been the practice of G od
win and Proudhon, anarchists turned to writing tracts, pamphlets and news
paper or magazine articles, dealing with questions of the day, points o f
factional or personal controversy, and problems of revolutionary tactics.
Bakunins often fragmentary writings, the high proportion of manifestoes,
proclamations, and open letters among his works, are typical not merely of
his personal peculiarities but even more of the great bulk of anarchist pub
lications of his day. W hat was needed in this situation to save anarchist
theory from falling apart completely was the appearance either of a great
theorist or of a dynamic, powerful personality who would by the sheer
appeal o f his own convictions draw together the scattering fragments o f
the movement. This role was played by Bakunin. Although not a theorist
of the stature of his great antagonist, Marx, in the fervor of his convictions
and the elan with which he expressed them he was superior to the socialist
leader.
The importance of Bakunin for modem students of political philosophy
thus lies in the crucial position which his works occupy in anarchist and
libertarian literature in general. In spite o f his frequently unconcealed con
 13 Preface
fusion, in spite of the internal contradictions in his .writings, in spite of the
fragmentary character of almost his entire literary output, Bakunin must
be regarded as the most important anarchist political philosopher. B y acci
dent o f birthboth as to time and placein consequence of manifold early
influences which embrace contact with Slavophilism, Hegelianism, Marx
ism, and Proudhonism, and last but not least because of his restless, ro
mantic temperament, Bakunin is a man who stands at the crossroads o f
several intellectual currents, who occupies a position in the history o f
anarchism at the end of an old and the beginning o f a new era. There is
none of the ponderous common sense o f Godwin, o f the ponderous dia
lectics o f Proudhon, o f the ponderous thoroughness of Max Stimer in
Bakunins works. Anarchism as a theory o f political speculation is gone,
and has been reborn as a theory of political action. Bakunin is not satisfied
to outline the evils of the existing system, and to describe the general frame
work o f a libertarian society, he preaches revolution, he participates in
revolutionary activity, he conspires, harangues, propagandizes, forms po
litical action groups, and supports every social upheaval, large or small,
promising, or doomed to failure, from its very beginning. And the type
of revolt which Bakunin principally considers is the wild Pugacbevcbina,
the unleashing of century-long suppressed peasant masses, who had plun
dered and destroyed the countryside, but had proven themselves essentially
incapable of building up a new and better society. And although Bakunin
was not a member o f any o f the nihilist action groups in Russia or
elsewhere, his unconditional partisanship of the revolutionary overthrow
of the existing order, provided inspiration for the young men and women
who believed in the efficacy of propaganda b y deeds.
W ith Bakunin there appeared, therefore, two new tendencies in anar
chist theory. The doctrine shifted from abstract speculation on the use and
abuse of political power to a theory of practical political action. A t the
same time anarchism ceased to be the political philosophy of the most
radical wing of the petty bourgeoisie and became a political doctrine
which looked for the mass of its adherents among the workers, and even
the lumpenproletariat, although its central cadres continued to be recruited
from among the intelligentsia. Without Bakunin anarchist syndicalism, such
as existed for a long time notably in Spain, is unthinkable. W ithout Bakunin,
Europe probably never would have witnessed an organized anarchist
political movement, such as made itself felt in Italy, France, and Switzer
land in the thirty years preceding the first world war. And it was Bakunins
talent for and imagination in establishing a school o f insurrectionary
activity which . . . contributed an important influence to the policies
o f Lenin. 8
Bakunins role in the anarchist tradition may thus be regarded as having
consisted in founding a new political party with the program to end all*
*John Maynard, Russia m FUtx, London, 1941, p. 187.
 i4 Preface
parties and to end all politics, and in having written that new partys pro
gram and its philosophical and general political underpinnings. This is no
mean feat in itself, but in view of the peculiar constellation o f intellectual
and practical political movements which affected Bakunin, his contribu
tion to political theory should be o f special interest to students of the
history o f political and social ideas. In the center of Bakunins political
thought stand two problems which have provided the subject matter for
a veritable host o f arguments and debates: liberty and violence. The first
has been the main concern of philosophical anarchism ever since it origi
nated in human thought, the second was added b y Bakunin. The originality
of his contribution lies in the weaving together of both themes into a con
sistent whole.
Unfortunately Bakunins thought has received very little attention up
to the very recent past in the United States. For example the well-known
text on the History of Political Theory b y George H. Sabine mentions
Bakunin only once and even in this place makes no comment on any views
professed by him, but merely lists him as an intellectual ancestor of syndi
calism. O nly a very minute fraction of the original works b y Bakunin have
so far been available in English translation, and hence his own opinions
expressed in his own words are scarcely known to those who do not read
foreign languages. But also the Russian, French, German, and Spanish edi
tions o f Bakunins works are not easily available, and there are quite a
number of even large libraries in the United States which have only very
poor and incomplete collections of Bakuniniana.
The reason for this neglect to make available the works of a doubtless
important political thinker in an American edition seems to be threefold.
In part, the bad repute anarchism has had in the United States must be
made accountable for it. Since it was regarded as a set o f beliefs cherished
by criminals or, at best, lunatics it was not felt necessary to place before
American readers the works of a man who was commonly regarded as
one o f the most important intellectual forebears o f this poUtical lunacy.
But we have seen that anarchism did not originate with Bakunin, that it
has a long and distinguished history, and that some o f its rootsthe quest
for human freedom, the postulate of moral self-reliance on ones conscience,
the license to use violence against tyrannyare in the Christian and the
Anglo-Saxon radicalist tradition, both o f which have had a deep influence
on political thought in the United States.
A second reason for the almost complete unavailability of Bakunins
works in English has been the persistence of a one-sided historical account
of his conflict with Marx which was built almost into a legend by later
followers and disciples of Marx. This incident, the struggle for control of
the International Workingmens Association, is probably the best known
episode of Bakunins life. Unfortunately there exists hardly a single truly
objective study of that conflict. The followers o f Marx have imputed
sometimes the most sinister motives to Bakunin, and the followers o f Baku
 i j Preface
nin, notably James Guillaume, have been inspired by such apparent hatred
o f Marx that their descriptions o f the conflict must be ruled out because
o f their very obvious bias. The best and most detached history of Bakunins
relations with Marx, that has come to my attention, is the account given
b y E. H . Carr in his biography of Bakunin. It is not necessary to repeat
this account here, even very briefly. In essence the struggle between
Bakunin and Marx was one for the control of an organization which had
international ramifications and which both believed to be able to attain
great influence among large masses of the workers. Since the organization
had to have a clear and consistent political program, the struggle was
fought with bitterness and use of all the ideological weapons at the dis
posal of each side. There were denunciations and counter-denunciations,
there were castigations of the opponents character and purity of motives,
and since both Marx and Bakunin could be irate, sarcastic, and violent in
their use of words, the conflict was hurtful to each side and left a large
amount of hatred, suspicion, and bad feeling. Bakunin lost out, but, as is
well known, Marxs victory was a Pyrrhic victory. The conflict between
the giants had destroyed the International. The posthumous revenge of
the Marxist movement, which was infinitely better organized and provided
with considerably larger funds than the followers of Bakunin, was the
attempt to condemn Bakunin to oblivion. But in doing this it did a
disservice even to Karl Marx himself, for he had continued to read
Bakunins writings even after the break, and on the basis of some margin
al notes which he made in his copy of Gosudarstvennost i Anarkhiia
(Statism and Anarchism) and which were published b y Ryazanoff in the
second volume (1926) of Letopisi Marksisms, we must conclude that many
o f Bakunins ideas exerted a deep and lasting influence on Marx. And al
though Bakunins influence on Russian socialism has so far only been
partially investigated, there can be no doubt that he must be counted
among the intellectual forebears of Lenins party.
The third reason for the past neglect of bringing out Bakunins works
in the United States must be laid at the very door of Bakunin himself. As
already pointed out most o f his works are either fragmentary, or deal
with political problems o f the day or factional disputes. The reader of
these works thus is either presented with an incomplete piece and/or has
to familiarize himself with a mass of historical detail of the history o f
radical parties and movements of the nineteenth century to appreciate them
fully. Some aid to potential readers of Bakunin has been available since
1937 in the bulky biography, Michael Bakunin, b y Edward H. Carr. But
the usefulness of Carrs work is strictly limited, since it deals almost ex
clusively with the factual incidents o f Bakunins life rather than with his
ideas. The obvious intention of Carr not to write an intellectual biography
of Bakunin is exhibited clearly b y the fact that he does not even mention
Statism and Anarchism, a book that by some is judged to be Bakunins
greatest and most mature work.
 16 Preface
For all these reasons, it appears eminently desirable to let Bakunin speak
for himself. But a publication in English of a comprehensive selection of
his works in full would have presented insurmountable difficulties. Noth
ing less than a set of several volumes would have done justice to the volumi
nous output of Bakunin. Such a procedure would have been clearly
impracticablehowever desirable from a purely scholarly standpoint it
might have beenand would probably have delayed for decades, if not
forever, the appearance of Bakunins works in English. Fortunately these
difficulties are avoided by the able compilation and systematic presentation
of excerpts from Bakunins works by G . P. Maximoff, which is contained
in this volume. Although Bakunins ideas appear in a much more systematic
and logically consistent form than he ever presented them, the advantage
o f this arrangement is obvious, since much space is saved and yet not
merely the gist but the exhaustive grounding of Bakunins thought is pre
sented. It is believed that this work, therefore, presents at least, in a con
venient fashion, the thought of an important political thinker of the
nineteenth century, and certainly one of the three or four leading figures
in the history o f philosophical anarchism.
But there is still another reason w hy a publication of Bakunins writings
today may be considered timely. The bureaucratic, centralized state is
everywhere on the increase. In the Soviet orbit, all personal freedoms,
which even in the most democratic periods of those countries had led a
very tenuous existence, are suppressed more thoroughly than ever before.
In the western world, political freedoms are under attack from many
quarters, and the masses, instead of loudly voicing their concern over this
trend, appear to become daily more and more inert, with standardized
tastes, standardized views, and, one would fear, standardized emotions.
The field is wide open for demagogues and charlatans, and although it
may still be true that not all the people can be fooled all the time, very
many people apparently have been fooled a very long time. The garrison
state of Stalin, on the one hand, and the increasing political apathy of large
sections of the popular masses, on the other, have given a new impetus to
some men of vision to reflect anew upon some of the principles which
had been taken for granted as the foundation of western political thought.
The meaning of liberty and the forms and limits o f political violence are
problems which agitate a good many minds today, just as they did in
the days o f La Botie, Diderot, Junius, and Bakunin. In such a situation
men like to turn for inspiration or confirmation of their own thought to
the work of authors who have struggled with the same or similar prob
lems. The startling and often brilliant insights o f Bakunin presented in
this volume should be a fruitful source of new ideas for the clarification
of the great issues surrounding the problems of freedom and power.
Bert F, Hoselitz
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
 Introduction
BY RU DOL F ROC KE R

M i k h a i l B a k u n i n stands out as unique among the revolutionary person

alities of the nineteenth century. This extraordinary man combined in his
being the dauntless socio-philosophical thinker with the man of action,
something rarely encountered in one and the same individual. He was
always prepared to seize every chance to remold any sphere of human
society.
His impetuous and impassioned urge for action subsided somewhat,
however, after the defeat o f the Paris Commune of 1871, and fin ally-
following the collapse of the revolts of Bologna and Imola in 1874he
withdrew completely from political activity, two years before his death.
His powerful body had been undermined by ailments from which he had
long suffered.
But it was not only the increasingly rapid decline of his physical
powers which motivated his decision. Bakunins political vision, which
was later so often confirmed by events, convinced him that with the birth
of the new German Empire, after the Franco-Prussian W ar of 1870-71,
another historical epoch had been ushered in, bound to be disastrous for
the social evolution of Europe, and to paralyze for many years all revolu
tionary aspirations for a rebirth of society in the spirit of Socialism.
It was not the disillusionment of an elderly man, ravaged by disease,
who had lost faith in his ideals, which had made him abandon the struggle,
but the conviction that with the change of conditions caused by the war,
Europe had entered a period which would break radically with the tradi
tions created b y the Great French Revolution of 1789, and which would
be superseded by a new and intense reaction. In this respect Bakunin fore
saw the future of Europe much more correctly than most of his con
temporaries. H e was mistaken in his estimate of the duration of this new
reaction, which led to the militarization of all Europe, but he recognized
its nature better than anyone else. That appears particularly in his pathetic
letter of November 11, 1874, to his friend Nikolai Ogarev:

17
 iB Introduction
As for myself, old friend, this time I aiso have finally abandoned any
effective activity and have withdrawn from all connection with active
engagements. First, because the present time is decisively inappropriate.
Bismarckianism, which is militarism, police rule, and finance monopoly,
united in a system characteristic o f the new statism, is conquering every
thing. For the next ten or fifteen years perhaps, this powerful and scientific
disavowal of all humanity will remain victorious. I dont mean to say that
there is nothing to be done now, but these new conditions demand new
methods, and mainly new blood. 1 feel that 1 am no good any more for
fresh struggles, and I have resigned without waiting for a plucky G il Bias
to tell me: Plus d'homlies, MonseigneurP [N o more sermons, M y Lord!]
Bakunin played a conspicuous part in two great revolutionary periods,
which made his name known throughout the world. W hen the February
revolution of 1848 broke out in France, which he, as Max Nettlau wrote,
had foreseen in his fearless speech in November, 1847, on the anniversary
of the Polish revolution, Bakunin hastened to Paris, where, in the thick of
the turmoil of revolutionary events, he probably lived the happiest weeks
of his life. But he soon realized that the victorious course o f the Revolution
in France, in view of the rebellious ferment noticeable all over Europe,
would evoke strong reverberations in other countries, and that it was of
paramount importance to unite all revolutionary elements, and to prevent
the splitting up o f those forces, knowing that such dispersion would work
only to the advantage of the lurking counter-revolution.
Bakunins foreknowledge then was considerably ahead of the general
revolutionary aspirations of that time, as appears from his letter of April,
1848, to P. M. Annenkov, and particularly also from his letters to his
friend, the German poet Georg Herwegh, written in August o f the same
year. And he likewise had enough political insight to discern that existing
conditions must be reckoned with, in order that the larger obstacles be
removed, before the Revolution could reach for higher aims.
Shortly after the March revolution in Berlin, Bakunin went to G er
many, to make contact from there with his many friends among the Poles,
Czechs, and other Slavic nationalities, with the thought o f stimulating
them to a general revolt in conjunction with the Western and German
democracy. In this he saw the only possible way to batter down the last
remaining bulwarks o f royal absolutism in EuropeAustria, Rdssia, and
Prussiawhich had not been much affected b y the Great French Revolu
tion. T o his eyes those countries loomed as the strongest barriers against
any attempt at social reconstruction on the Continent and the most power
ful buttress for every reaction.
His feverish activity in the revolutionary period o f 1848-49 attained its
highest point during his military leadership o f the Dresden uprising in May
of th latter year, which made him one o f the most celebrated revolu
tionaries in Europe, to whom even Marx and Engels could not deny their
19 Introduction
recognition* This period, however, was followed by gloomy years of long
and harrowing confinement in German, Austrian, and Russian prisons,
which were lightened only when he was exiled to Siberia in March, 1857.
A fter twelve years o f prisons and exile Bakunin succeeded in escaping
from Siberia and arriving in December, 1861, in London, where he was
welcomed with open arms b y his friends Herzen and Ogarev. It was just
then that the widespread reaction in Europe, which had followed the
revolutionary happenings of 1848-49, began gradually to abate. In the
Sixties new trends and a new spirit were manifest in many parts of the
Continent, which inspired new hope among the rebel-minded whose goal
was human freedom. The exploits of Garibaldi and his gallant bands in
Sicily and on the Italian mainland, the Polish insurrection o f 1863-64, the
growing opposition in France to the regime o f Napoleon III, the beginning
of a European labor movement, and the founding of the First International,
were portentous signs o f forthcoming great changes. A ll these stirring
developments made not only the revolutionists o f various political lean
ings believe that another 1848 was in the making, but even impelled
reputable historians to make similar forecasts. It was a time o f great expec
tations, which, however, was cut short b y the war o f 1870-71, and b y
the defeat o f the Paris Commune and the Spanish Revolution o f 1873,
This vibrant atmosphere of the Sixties was exactly what was needed
b y Bakunins impetuous urge for action, a craving b y no means weakened
b y his past gruelling imprisonment. It almost looked as if he sought to
catch up with all the activity he had missed in more than a decade of
enforced silence. During the long years when he was a prisoner, first in
the Austrian fortress of Olmutz and then In the Peter-and-Paul fortress
and in Schlsselburg, where he was kept in unbroken solitary confinement,
he was deprived o f any possibility of learning what was going on in the
outside world. Neither was he able to visualize during his exile in Siberia
the far-flung transitions in Europe which had followed the stormy days of
the two revolutionary years. Whatever he heard b y accident in the exile
period was only faint echoes from distant lands, of occurrences which
had no relation to his Siberian surroundings.
That helps to explain why, immediately after his escape from the farthest
reaches o f Alexander IPs domain, Bakunin tried to resume his activity
where he had left off in 1849, by announcing that he was renewing his
struggle against the Russian, Austrian, and Prussian despotisms, and con
tending for the union of all Slavic peoples on the basis o f federated com
munes and common ownership o f land.
O nly after the defeat of the Polish insurrection o f 1863 and Bakunins
moving to Italy, where he found an entirely new field for his energies,
did his actions assume an international character. From the day he arrived
in London his indefatigable inner urge drove him again and again to revo
lutionary enterprises which occupied the next thirteen years o f his agitated
20 Introduction
Ufc. He took a leading part in the secret preparations for the Polish insur
rection, and even succeeded in persuading placid Herzen to follow a path
contrary to his inclinations. In Italy he became the founder o f a social-
revolutionary movement, which came into open conflict with Mazzinis
nationalist aspirations, and which attracted many o f the best elements of
Italian youth.
Later he became the soul and inspiration of the libertarian wing o f the
First International, and thus the founder o f a federalist anti-authoritarian
branch o f the Socialist movement, which spread all over the world, and
which fought against all forms of State Socialism, His correspondence
with well-known revolutionists of various countries burgeoned to an almost
unparalleled volume. He participated in the Lyons revolt in 1870, and in
the Italian insurrectional movement in 1874, at a time when his health was
obviously breaking. A ll this indicates the mighty vitality and will-power
that he possessed. Herzen said o f him: Everything about this man is
colossal, his energy, his appetite, yes, even the man himself!
It will be easily understood why, in view o f the tempestuousness o f his
life, most of Bakunins writings remained fragmentary. Publication of his
collected works did not begin until nineteen years after his death. Then,
in 1895, the first volume o f a French edition of those writings, edited by
Max Nettlau, was brought out b y P. V. Stock in Paris. That was followed
b y five other volumes, also issued by Stock, but edited b y James Guillaume,
in the period from 1907 to 1913. The same publisher announced additional
Bakunin works to come, but was prevented from issuing them b y condi
tions growing out of W orld W ar I. W e know that Guillaume prepared a
seventh volume for the printers, and that it was to have been brought out
after the Armistice. But unfortunately it has not yet appeared. The six
French volumes issued so far include, in addition to works published in
pamphlet form at earlier dates, the text of numerous manuscripts never
before printed.
A Russian edition of Bakunin in five volumes was issued b y Golos
Truda in Petrograd in 1919-22. Notably the first of these is Statism and
Anarchism, which is not in the French edition. But the Russian edition
lacks several of Bakunins works which are included in the French set.
In addition to these five tomes in Russian the Bolshevik government planned
to bring out in its Socialist Classics complete editions of the works of both
Bakunin and Kropotkin. The editing of the Bakunin edition for this enter
prise was entrusted to George Steklov, who intended to issue fourteen
volumes. But only four of these were publishedcontaining the writings,
letters, and other documents of Bakunin up to 1861. Later, however, even
those four tomes were withdrawn from circulation.
Three Bakunin volumes in German were brought out in 1921-24 by
the publishers of the periodical Der Syndikalist in Berlin. A t m y sug
gestion they undertook to produce tw o more volumes, the translation and
 2i Introduction
preparation of which were to have been done b y Max Nettlau, who also
had selected the contents of and edited the second and third German
volumes. But the Nazi domination of Germany prevented the publication
o f the additional two.
In the Nineteen Twenties a Spanish edition of Bakunin was projected
b y the administrators of the Anarchist daily newspaper, La Protesta, in
Buenos Aires. Diego Abad de Santillan was commissioned to prepare the
Spanish text for it, with Nettlau as editorial consultant. O f that edition
five volumes had appeared by 1929, the fifth one being Statism and Anar
chism, with a prologue by Nettlau. But issuance o f the remaining five was
completely blocked by the suppression of both La Protesta and its book
publishing business b y Uriburus dictatorial regime, established in 1930.
The fifth Spanish volume included the text of Statism and Anarchism,
which Bakunin wrote in Russian. This book, of which, in 1878, only a
few short passages had been published in French in the newspaper VAvant-
Garde in Chaud-de-Fonds, Switzerland, so far has not been translated into
any other language but Spanish. One special virtue of the Buenos Aires
edition is the illuminating historical introduction written b y Nettlau for
each volume. . . . Afterward, in the time of the Spanish Civil W ar,
Santillan tried to bring out Bakunins works in Barcelona, and a few vol
umes in beautiful format were printed there, but the victory of Franco
killed all attempts to complete that undertaking,
N o complete edition o f Bakunins works has yet been issued in any
language. And none of the existing editionsexcept the four-volume set
issued by the Soviet Russian government, contains the writings of his first
revolutionary period, which are of particular interest and importance for
the understanding of his spiritual evolution. Some of those writings ap
peared in periodicals or in pamphlet form, in German, French, Czech,
Polish, Swedish, and Russian. Among these were his notable and widely
discussed essay, The Reaction in Germany, A Fragment by a Frenchman,
which, under the pseudonym Jules Elysard, he wrote for the Deutsche
Jahrbiicher, published b y Arnold Ruge in Leipzig; his article about Com
munism in Frobels Scbweizerischer Republikaner in Zurich, 1843; the
text o f Bakunins speech on the anniversary of the Polish revolution; his
anonymous articles in the Allgemeine Oderzeitung o f Breslau; his Appeal
to the Slavs in 1849, and other writings from that period. Later on, after
his escape from Siberia, there were his Appeal to M y Russian, Polish, and
A ll Slavic Friends, in 1862; his essay The People's Came: Romanov, Puga
chev, or Pestel?, which came out the same year in London, and various
others.
Bakunin was a brilliant author, though his writings lack system and
organization, and he knew how to put ardor and enthusiasm and fire into
his words. Most of his literary work was produced under the direct influ
ence of immediate contemporary events, and as he took active part in
22 Introduction
many of those events, he rarely had time for leisurely and deliberate polish
ing of his manuscripts. That largely explains w h y so many of them
remained incomplete, and often were mere fragments. Gustav Landauer
understood this well when he said: I have loved and admired Mikhail
Bakunin, the most enchanting of all revolutionists, from the first day I
knew him, for there are few dissertations written as vividly as hisperhaps
that is the reason w h y they are as fragmentary as life itself.
Bakunin had long wished to set down his theories and opinions in a
large all-inclusive volume, a desire which he repeatedly expressed in his
later years. He attempted this several times, but for one reason or another
he succeeded only partly, which, in view of his prodigiously active life,
wherein one task was apt to be shoved into the background by ten new
ones, hardly could have been avoided.
The first attempt in that direction was his work The Revolutionary
Question: Federalism, Socialism, and Anti-Theologism. He and his more
intimate friends submitted to the inquiry committee of the first Congress
of the League for Peace and Freedom, held in Geneva in 1867, a reso
lution intended to win the delegates over to these postulates, an effort
which, because of the composition of the committee, was utterly hopeless.
Bakunin expounded the three points in a lengthy argument which was
to be printed in Berne. But after a few sheets had gone through the press,
the job was stopped and the type-forms destroyedfor reasons never
explained. The manuscript (or most of it) surviving, the text was pub
lished in 1895 in the first volume of the French edition of Bakunin. That
work runs to 205 pages. Its conclusion, however, is missing, the final printed
paragraph ending with a broken sentence. W e do not know whether that
part was lost, or if Bakunin never got around to completing this manu
script. But the pages which were preserved show clearly that he intended
to include in one volume the basic tenets o f his theories and opinions.
A second and more ambitious attempt was made b y Bakunin with his
The Knouto~G ermanic Empire and the Social Revolution, the first part of
which was published in 1871. A second part, o f which several pages had
been set up in type, was never published in his lifetime. But numerous
manuscripts left b y him, of which several had been prepared with great
care, as is evidenced by the changes in the text, prove ^hat he was exceed
ingly anxious to complete this work.
Like most o f Bakunins literary productions, this one also was inspired
by the pressing events o f the hour. In that instance the compelling motif
was the Franco-German W ar of 1870-71. He preceded that script in
September, 1870, with a kind of introduction entitled Letters to a French
man About the Present Crisis, of which only a small part of 45 pages was
put into print at that time. W ith those letters, which he had secretly dis
patched to rebel elements in France, Bakunin tried to arouse the French
people to revolutionary resistance against the German invasion, and his
2 3 Introduction
personal participation in the insurrection of Lyons in September, 1871,
bears witness that he was willing to risk his own life in that venture. O nly
after the insurrectionary efforts in Lyons and Marseilles failed and he was
forced to flee from France, did he find time to work on his more substan
tial manuscript, though even then his writing was frequently interrupted.
The residue of his Letters to a Frenchman, which was not printed while
he lived, as well as most of the manuscripts he intended for his larger
volume about the Knouto-Germanic Empire, were published for the first
time, in French, long after his death.
Though Bakunin never succeeded in completing this intended larger
volume, that attempt to concentrate on the most important points o f his
socio-phflosophical theories, enabled him soon thereafter to confront
Mazzini with brilliant arguments, when the latter launched his attacks against
the First International and the Paris Commune. In fact, the polemical
writings o f Bakunin against Mazzini, and particularly his The Political
Theology of Mazzini and the International are among the best he ever
wrote. From various manuscripts left by Bakunin, it is evident that he
meant to write a sequel to this latter pamphlet, but only a few sketchy
notes on the subject were discovered.
His last important work, Statism and Anarchism, appeared in 1873. It
was the only extensive text that he wrote in Russian. In it he incorporated
many ideas which are found in one form or another in several other
manuscripts, intended for inclusion in The Knouto-Germanic Empire and
the Social Revolution. But of Statism and Anarchism, which, together with
an appendix, comprises 332 printed pages in that Russian edition, only the
first part has been published. In 1874, when Bakunin had definitely retired
from both public and secret revolutionary action, he might have found
time for the materialization of his life-long ambition, but his illness and
worries over the problem of obtaining the bare necessities for subsistence
marred the last two years of his life, though he did not suspect that he
had only a short while longer to live. Yet even in those days of dire
poverty he was tormented by the desire to finish the major literary task
so often interrupted. In November, 1874, he wrote in the previously quoted
letter to Ogarev:
B y the way, I do not sit around idle, but I work a lot. First, I am
writing my memories, and second, I am preparing myselfif my forces
will allow itto write the last words concerning my deepest convictions.
And I read a lot. N o w I am reading three books simultaneously: Kolbs
History of Human Culture, John Stuart Mills autobiography, and Scho
penhauer. . . . I have had enough of teaching. N ow , my old friend, in our
old days we want to begin learning again. It is more amusing.
But his memoirs, which Herzen had urged him so often to put on paper
were never written, except for a fragment, Histoire de ma Vie, in which
Bakunin tells o f his early youth on the estate of his parents in Pryamu-
 24 introduction
khino. It was published for the first rime b y Max Nettlau in September,
1896, in the magazine Socit Nouvelle of Brussels.
Even though the bulk of Bakunins writings remained fragmentary,
nevertheless the numerous manuscripts he left, which saw the light of
print only in later years, contain many original and sagaciously developed
ideas on a great variety of intellectual, political, and social problems. And
these largely still maintain their importance and may also inspire future
generations. Among them are profound and ingenious observations on the
nature of science and its relation to real life and the social mutations of
history. One should keep in mind that those superb dissertations were writ
ten at a time when intellectual life generally was under the influence o f the
reawakened natural sciences. A t that time, too, functions and tasks were
often assigned to science which it could never fulfill, and thus many of
its representatives were led to conclusions justifying every form of
reaction.
The advocates of the so-called social Darwinism made the survived of
the fittest the basic law o f existence for all social organisms and rebuked
anyone who dared contradict this latest scientific revelation. Bourgeois
and even Socialist economists, carried away b y their fervor to give their
own treatises a scientific foundation, misjudged the worth of human labor
so greatly that they pronounced it equivalent to a commodity exchange
able for any other commodity. And in their attempts to reduce to a simple
formula value for use and exchange value, they forgot the most vital factor,
the ethical value of human laborthe real creator o f all cultural life.
Bakunin was one of the first who clearly perceived that the phenomena
of social life could not be adapted to laboratory formulas, and that efforts
in this direction would inevitably lead to odious tyranny. He b y no means
miscalculated the importance of science and he never intended to dispute
the place to which it was entitled, but he advised caution against attribut
ing too great a role to scientific knowledge and its practical results. He
objected to science becoming the final arbiter of all personal life and of
the social destiny of humanity, being keenly awake to the disastrous
possibilities of such a course. H ow right he was in his forebodings, we
understand better now than most of his contemporaries could know.
Today, in the age of the atomic bomb, it becomes obvious how far we
may be misled b y the predominance of exclusively scientific thinking,
when it is not influenced b y any human considerations, but has in mind
only immediate results without regard to final consequences, though they
may lead to extermination of all human life.
Among countless fragmentary notes b y Bakunin there are various
sketchy memoranda, which indicate that he meant to elaborate them when
time might permit. And there was never enough time for him to do this.
But there also are others, developed with meticulous care and vividly
expressive language; for instance, the scintillating essay which Carlo
25 Introduction
Cafiero and EUsee Reclus published for the first time in 1882in pamphlet
form -under the title God and the State. Since then that pamphlet has
been republished in many languages and has had the widest circulation of
any of its authors writings. A logical continuation o f this essay, in pages
penned for The Knouto-Germanic Empire, was found later by Nettlau
among Bakunins manuscripts, and he incorporated it under the same title
in the first volume of the French edition of the Bakunin Oeuvres, after
publishing an extract thereof in English in James Tochettis magazine
Liberty in London.
Bakunins world of ideas is revealed in a diversity of manuscripts.
Therefore it was no mean task to find in this labyrinth of literary frag
ments the essential inner connections to form a complete picture of his
theories.
It was an admirable purpose on the part of our cherished comrade
MaximofF, who died all too young, to present in proper order the most
important thoughts of Bakunin, and thus to give the reader a clear exposi
tion of his doctrines in the pages which follow. This work is particularly
commendable because most of Bakunins collected writings in any
language are out of print and difficult to obtain. The Russian and German
editions are completely out of print, and several volumes of the French
edition also are no longer obtainable. It is especially gratifying that the
present edition will appear in English, because only Bakunins G od and
the State and a few minor pamphlets have been issued in that language.
MaximofF divided his annotated selections into four parts, and arranged
in logical sequence the fundamental concepts expressed b y Bakunin on
subjects including Religion, Science, the State, Society, the Family,
Property, historical transitions, and his methods in the struggle for social
liberation. A s a profound connoiseur o f Bakunins socio-philosophicai ideas
and of his literary work, he was eminently qualified to undertake this
project, to which he devoted years of painstaking labor.

Gregori Petrovich MaximofF was bom on November 10, 1893, in the

Russian village of Mitushino in the province of Smolensk. A fter com
pleting his elementary education he was sent by his father to the theolog
ical seminary in Vladimir to study for the priesthood. Though he finished
the course there, he realized that he was not fitted for that vocation, and
went to S t Petersburg, where he entered the Agricultural Academy,
graduating as an agronomist in 1915.
A t a very early age he became acquainted with the revolutionary
movement. He was tireless in his quest for new spiritual and social values,
and during his college years he studied the programs and methods of all
revolutionary parties in Russia, until he came across some writings of
Kropotkin and Stepniak, in which he found confirmation of many of his
own ideas which he had worked out by himself. And his spiritual evolution
26 Introduction
was further advanced when, later on, he discovered in a private library
in the Russian interior tw o works of Bakunin which impressed him deeply.
O f all the libertarian thinkers it was Bakunin who appealed most strongly
to Maximoff. The bold language of the great rebel and the irresistible
power o f his words which had profoundly influenced so many o f Russias
youths, now also won over Maximoff, who was to remain under his spell
for the rest of his life.
Maximoff took part in the secret propaganda among the students in
St. Petersburg and the peasants in the rural regions, and when finally the
long awaited revolution broke out, he established contacts with the
labor unions, serving in their shop councils and speaking at their meetings.
It was a period of boundless hope for him and his comrad eswhich, how
ever, was shattered not long after the Bolsheviks seized control of the
Russian government. He joined the Red A rm y to fight against the counter
revolution, bat when the new masters of Russia used the A rm y for police
work and for the disarming of the people, Maximoff refused to obey
orders o f that kind and was condemned to death. He owed it to the soli
darity and dynamic protests of the steel workers union that his life was
spared.
The last time that he was arrested was on March 8, 1921, at the time
of the Kronstadt rebellion, when he was thrown into the Taganka prison
in Moscow with a dozen comrades on no other charge than the holding of
his Anarchist opinions. Four months later he took part in a hunger strike
there which lasted ten and a half days and which had wide reverberations.
That strike was ended only after French and Spanish comrades, then
attending a congress o f the Red Trade Union International, raised their
voices against the inhumanity o f the Bolshevik government, and demanded
that the imprisoned men be freed. The Soviet regime acceded to this
demand, on condition that the prisoners, all native Russians, be exiled
from their home land.
That is w hy Maximoff went first to Germany, where I had the
welcome opportunity to meet him and to join the circle pf his friends.
He remained in Berln for about three years and then went to Paris. There
he stayed for six or seven months, whereupon he emigrated to the United
States.
Maximoff wrote a great deal about the human struggle through many
years, during which he was at various rimes an editor of and contributor
to libertarian newspapers and magazines in the Russian language. In
Moscow he served as co-editor o f Golos Truda (Voice o f Labor), and
later of its successor, Novy Golos Truda (N ew Voice of Labor.) In
Berlin he became the editor of Rabat chi Put} (Labors Path), a magazine
published by Russian Anarcho-Syndicalists. Settling later in Chicago, he
was appointed as editor of Golos Truzhenika (Voice of the Toiler), to
which he had contributed from Europe. A fter that periodical ceased to
27 Introduction
exist he assumed the editorship of Dielo Trouda-Probuzhdenie (Labors
Cause-Awakening, a name growing; out of the merger o f two magazines),
issued in N ew York City, a post he held until his death. The roster of
Maximoffs writings in the periodical field makes up a long and sub
stantial bibliography.
T o his credit, too, is the writing of a book entitled The Guillotine at
Work, a richly documented history of twenty years o f terror in Soviet
Russia, published in Chicago in 1940; a volume called Constructive
Anarchism, brought out likewise in that city in 1952; a pamphlet,
Bolshevism: Promises and Reality, an illuminating analysis of the actions
of the Russian Communist Party, issued in Glasgow in 1935 and
reprinted in 1937; and two pamphlets published in Russian in Germany
earlierInstead of a Program, which dealt with the resolutions o f two
conferences of Anarcho-Syndicalists in Russia, and Why and How the
Bolsheviks Deported the Anarchists from Russia, which related the
experiences of his comrades and himself in Moscow.
Maximolff died in Chicago on March 16, 1950, while yet in the prime
of life, as the result of heart trouble, and was mourned b y all who had the
good fortune to know him.
He was not only a lucid thinker but a man of stainless character and
broad human understanding. And he was a whole person, in whom clarity
of thought and warmth of feeling were united in the happiest way. For
him, Anarchism was not merely a concern for things to come, but the
leit-motif of his own life; it played a part in all o f his activities. He also
possessed understanding for other conceptions than his own, so long as
he was convinced that such beliefs were inspired by good will and deep
conviction. His tolerance was as great as his comradely feeling for all who
came into contact with him. He lived as an Anarchist, not because he felt
some sort o f duty to do so, imposed from outside, but because he could
not do otherwise, for his innermost being always caused him to act as he
felt and thought.

Crompond, N . Y.
July, 1952.
 M ikhal Bakunin:
A Biographical Sketch
BY MAX NETTLAU

M ikhail A lexandrovitch Bakunin was born on M ay 18, 1814 in Prya-

mukhino, an estate on the banks of the Osuga, in the Novotorschok district
of T ver province. His grandfather, Mikhail Vasilevitch Bakunin, state
counselor and vice-president of the Chamber Collegium in the time of
Catherine II, had bought the estate in 1779, and after leaving government
service, had lived there with his large family. His third son, Alexander,
Mikhail Bakunins father, for unknown reasons was brought up after the
age of nine in Italy, where he became a doctor of philosophy at the
University of Padua.
Though Alexander was slated for diplomatic service, he took up
natural sciences also, and followed in general liberal philosophical and
cosmopolitan ideas which were prevalent in all educated circles in the
years before the French Revolution and in the period immediately follow
ing the storming of the Bastille. But the grim realities of the years of
revolution quenched his platonic liberalism. One of his two brothers was
a government official and the other an officer. Alexander, however, very
soon left the government service, and at the request of his parents he
managed the family estate, where his unmarried sisters also lived. These
sisters were wholly absorbed in religious devotions, apparently because
of the death of their brother Ivan, an officer who had been killed in the
Caucasian war in the Eighteen Twenties.
N ot before he reached the age of forty did Alexander fall in love
and then he married a young woman o f the Muraviev family, Barbara
Alexandrovna, who had had numerous suitors. During the years 1811-
1824 she became the mother of eleven children. The oldest were daughters,
Lyubov (1811) and Barbara (1812); they were followed by Mikhail

N O T E : Bakunin's birth-date in this sketch is given in Russian Old Style, and Nettlaus
Russian dates therein evidently are all Old Style, which in the 19th century was in each
instance 11 days earlier than the equivalent date in our own calendar.
29
30 Mikhail Bakunin: A Biographical Sketch
(1814), the daughters Tatiana (1815), and Alexandra (1816), and five
sons, bom between 1818 and 1823, and a daughter who died at the age o f
two. This big family lived most o f the time in Pryamukhino, occasionally
visiting T ver and Moscow, until studies, or, in the case o f the older sisters,
marriage and an early death in 1838 decreased the size of the household.
The parents, particularly the father, who became blind, reached a ripe old
age. He died in 1856, the mother in 1864.
Mikhail Bakunins youth and his relationships with his family circle
undoubtedly had a great influence on his development, as appears from
his own short accountTAe Youth of M ikkdl Bakunin published in
Moscow, 191, in Rmskaya My si (Russian Thought), from the letters
carefully edited b y A . A , Kornilov, and other material. Although Bakunin
outgrew his environment so completely, nevertheless it supplied the basis,
trend, and motivation for his career, while the energy of his active life
and the breadth of his aims undoubtedly sprang from his individual nature.
His great capacity to absorb the best thoughts and achievements o f his
period was combined with ability to co-ordinate their inner meaning with
his own purposeful and resolute striving toward a distant goal.
W hile there were no radical or realistic influences in his parents home
to shape his character, there were humanistic influences there which
tended to deepen his inner life. His old father, cautiously conservative
as his attitude toward young people appeared to be, was however, deeply
influenced by the prevailing humane ideas o f the Encyclopedists and Jean
Jacques Rousseau. The piety of Mikhails amts was transferred to the
oldest of their nieces in the form of a cult of their inner life, and a
striving toward unattainable truth, which they later came to look for in
philosophy rather than in religion. As Mikhail grew older, his sisters soon
began to see in him a co-searcher with them for the truth, and the uncon
tested spiritual mentor of this younger brother. Soon he became the
spiritual leader of all his brothers and sisters.
That family circle was, in fact, the most ideal group to which he
ever belonged, the model for all his organizations and his conception o f
a free and happy life for humanity in general. The absence of any eco
nomic problems, the comfortable country life among the beauties of
nature, though it was based on the serfdom of so many, formed a close
bond between these sisters and brothers, created a microcosm o f freedom
and solidarity with intimate and intensive striving toward the inner per
fection of each one of them and the full expression of his inborn talents.
There was, however, always present the desire that from the fulfilment
of each one, the best interests of all should be forwarded. From this soon
developed Mikhails desire to serve all humanity and to give selflessly to
others everything he might gain for himself.
Here undoubtedly were planted the seeds of his life-long striving
toward a world in which freedom and solidarity, Anarchism and Socialism,
 31 Mikhail Bakunin: A Biographical Sketch
could be united; doctrines inseparable from spiritual freedom and from
that understanding of nature, free of all superstitionsatheism. W hat
seemed to be missing then was the desire for destruction of the existing
society which later filled him so completely. He felt a holy zeal and a
fervent desire to work toward that aim; this logically grew into his con
viction o f the necessity o f destructionrevolution.
Bakunins spiritual development was interrupted but b y no means
stopped when on November 25, 1828, at the age of fourteen and a half, he
was sent to St. Petersburg to enter the artillery school. For several years
he lived in that institutionand hated ituntil he was promoted to die
officer class at the end of January, 1833. N o w permitted to live outside
the institution, he greeted his new freedom with joy. Soon he had a
temporary romance with a young cousin, and later in the summer of
1833, was deeply inspired by the poems of Venevitinov. This was followed
b y an attachment to an old friend of his father and a relative of his
mother, the former statesman Nikolai Nazarovitch Muraviev, who gave
him a practical insight into Russian political and economic affairs. A
younger Muraviev, Sergei Nikolayevitch, who was five years older than
Bakunin, very probably helped to foster his Russian nationalist sentiments
at that time. Such proclivities, though never lacking, had found little
encouragement in the cosmopolitan education in his fathers home.
In August-September, 1833, Mikhail visited his family in Pryamukhino,
and there found a new cause to championthe fight for justice, the
struggle of youth against the older generation, and the struggle o f human
freedom against authority. A t first this took the form of his siding with his
oldest sister in her rebellion against an unhappy marriage that was hateful
to her. This was his first struggle, which he fought with all his energy;
consequently the illusion o f general harmony, particularly o f the time-
honored family happiness, was destroyed.
His military career, which had never much interested him, was cut
short by a violent quarrel with a general, after which he was assigned to
an artillery brigade in western Russia, beginning in 1834, before he had
finished his officers training. His military service in the provinces of Minsk
and Grodno was interrupted by a summer journey to Pryamukhino. He
detested that service, which was a torture to him. He was also in Vilna,
and there he became somewhat acquainted with Polish society and got a
glimpse of Russias policy in Poland, through another relative, M. N .
Muraviev, then governor o f Grodno, who later became so notorious as
Polands hangman.
Smarting under military service and feeling terribly lonesome, Bakunin
at that time (December, 1834) dreamed of dedicating himself to science
and some civilian occupation after leaving the service. O nly in the event
of war, he decided, would he remain in the Arm y. He hoped to be trans
ferred to his home territory, and at the beginning of 1835 he was sent to
32 Mikhail Bakunin: A Biographical Sketch
Tver to buy horses. From there he went to Pryamukhino, reported sick,
and greatly against the wishes o f his father, obtained his discharge from
the A rm y on December 18, 1835. The father got for him a position in the
civil government service in Tver, but he refused to accept it. His fond
desire was to train himself for scientific work and obtain a professorship
in order to disseminate the philosophical knowledge he had gained from
his studies.
In March, 1835, he became acquainted in Moscow with a young man
named Stankevich, bom in 1813; during the summer his friend Efremov
visited the family estate, and in the fall Stankevich also came there and he
and Mikhail became intimate friends. Their philosophical interest at that
time was concentrated on Kant. However, Stankevich, for several years
a student o f German philosophy, wanted to study Kant as a basis for
understanding Schelling. Connection of Bakunin with Stankevichs circle
o f friends, established in 1831 and 1832, was easily formed through his
acquaintance with the Beer family in Moscow, whose tw o daughters were
friends o f his sisters and at whose house Stankevich and his friends often
visited.
In the fall of 1835 he had conceived in Tver, with his sisters and
brothers and the Beer sisters in Pryamukhino, the idea of forming his own
intimate circle, united in purpose and thought, as a refuge against the
outside world. This was, so to speak, the first o f his secret societies, which
always had an inner core o f his closest friends. T o detail all these relation
ships would be a huge task. Those who are interested in the people of the
Thirties and Forties and who can read Russian could be referred to
numerous volumes of correspondence, memoirs, biographies, etcetera,
but for those not acquainted with this special material it would be neces
sary to write volumes o f explanation. In general, however, it can be said,
that behind the philosophical literary ideology they put forward, the real
life o f all these diverse young men and women went on and demanded its
right to be heard. Their mutual idealistic aim formed a bond between the
rich and the relatively poor, and still more did the cross currents of love
affairs and passions, happy and unhappy, hopeless or fulfilled. The final
solution o f all these entanglements and conflicts, entered into with philo
sophical zeal and intensively discussed, was generally a very prosaic one,
wholly outside o f the realm o f ideas.
Naturally Mikhail was soon in the center of these surging emotions,
and took upon himself not only his own affairs but also those of his
sisters. It was inevitable that his friends, Belinsky included, would fall in
love with his sisters, while Mikhail remained emotionally impervious,
though many a girls heart beat faster when he was around. In addition to
that, there was his personal championship of his eldest sister, already
mentioned, in her luckless marriage. Because of the intimate family life
of his early youth he could not brush aside such worries, but had to inter
33 Mikhail Bakunin: A Biographical Sketch
fere with great energy in all these matters, which might have been settled
much better b y themselves without his meddling, and resulted in many
conflicts and enmities. This trait remained in him to the end of his fife,
for he was deeply convinced of his mission as a social being.
Being interested only in the remote possibility of a professorship o f
philosophy in Moscow as his goal in life, Mikhail came to a sharp break
with his family, and at the beginning of 1836, he left his parents home for
Moscow, to establish an independent existence in the metropolis. He
expected to attain this by private tutoring in mathematics while studying
at the University as a non-matriculated student. The immediate reason for
the quarrel with his parents was Bakunins persistent demand to travel
abroad, in order to study at a German university, which his old father,
blessed with eleven children, considered an impossible extravagance. In
Moscow, after February, 1836, Mikhail was entirely absorbed in the
philosophical ideas of Fichte, whose Lectures on the Destiny of the Scholar
he translated for the Telescope at the request of Belinsky. Fichtes The
Way to a Blessed Life fascinated him, and became his favorite book. W ith
Stankevich, he read Goethe, Schiller, Jean Paul, E .T.A . Hoffman, and
others. But his hope for economic independence did not materialize, neither
then nor at any time in all his years.
In April, 1836, he began to lecture, but by the end o f May he was
back in Pryamukhino, and remained there for quite a while, as the conflict
with his father had somewhat subsided, though neither of them abandoned
his point of view. W ith his sisters, who greatly deplored his brusque
attitude toward the father, he had threshed out the matter by correspon
dence. In the spring and summer he succeeded in converting them from
their formal piety, which up to that time they had considered the greatest
aim in life, to the most idealistic form of Fichteanism as propounded in
The Way to a Blessed Life. Also he strengthened his somewhat weakened
influence over them and his growing brothers.
Little information is available on the following years up to the summer
of 1840, during which Bakunin transferred his theoretical allegiance from
Fichte to Hegelin fact to the most rigorous Hegelianism, with its
conservative-reactionary conclusions concerning the Russia of that day.
That period also was marked by his relationship with Belinsky, his conflicts
with the radical and Socialist circles centering about Herzen and Ogarev,
and his contact with the younger Slavophiles, particularly with Konstantin
Aksakov and the older P. A. Tschaadaev (1794-1856). It was for Bakunin
largely a painful period of waiting because he could not obtain from his
father the means to study at a German university; neither were his other
hopes fulfilled.
He was only twenty-six years old when he finally left Russia, but he
had begun to fear that there he would gradually decay mentally.
Probably, however, these years were useful to him spiritually, because by
 34 Mikhail Bakunin: A Biographical Sketch
continuous mental activity he learned to enhance through brilliant discus
sions his rather small philosophical knowledge. He now faced new
impressions abroad with a more mature outlook than he had had in 1836,
and thus he escaped from being entirely absorbed by any one doctrineas
had happened to him in the case of Fichte and Hegel. And fortunately the
evolution of the radical philosophy and of Socialism advanced rapidly in
the years after 1840, while during the years 1836 to 1840 it had been only
in the stages of incubation. In this respect, also, conditions favored him.
The circumstances of his leaving Russia are clear from his well-known
letter (Tver, April 20, 1840) to Herzen, who finally lent him money for
the journey, and also from his passport (Tver, M ay 29) for the journey
from St. Petersburg by w ay of Lbeck to Berlin on June 29, 1840.

W e do not know the details of Bakunins mental growth during his

sojourn in Berlin and Dresden up to the end of 1842, but in the second
half o f this period he did make continuous progress toward becoming a
conscious revolutionary. Three documents serve as milestones of this
mental evolution: Bakunins preface to Hegels Lectures to High School
Students, published in the Moskovskn Nablyudatel, vol 16, 1838, edited by
Belinsky: the article On Philosophy in Otechestvennyia Zapiski, St. Peters
burg, 1849, vol. 9, section 2, the second part of which was never published;
and Reaction in GermanyA Fragment by a Frenchman signed Jules
Elysard, in the Deutsche Jahrbcher fr Wissenschaft und Kunst, Leipzig,
October 17-21, 1842. It is surprising to find in the first of these two
publications that such a clear mind could still remain so profoundly
influenced by empty dogmas, which Bakunin took as absolute truth,
without any regard to reality. Y et the famous article in the Deutsche
Jahrbcher, in spite of its philosophical verbiage, was a clarion call for
revolution in the widest sense, including social revolution. It ended with
the words: Let us have confidence in the eternal spirit which destroys
and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternally creative
source of life. The urge of destruction is at the same time ^ creative urge.
It is noteworthy also that Bakunin, after three university semesters in
Berlin, preferred to move to Dresden in the spring of 1842, to enjoy the
company of Arnold Ruge, who at that time was the center of the radical
Hegelians, and not to prepare for a Moscow professorship. Losing interest
in that, his chief concern now was awaiting the Revolution. A t that
time many forces were working toward the Revolution, which indeed
was not far distant, as was proved in 1848. O nly then did the Western
world unfold to hima world which up to that time he had viewed with
disdain, partly because of his Russian nationalist point of view, which still
clung to him, and partly because of the lofty philosophical knowledge he
imagined he had. Socialism, as it was developing at that time in France,
was introduced to the German public for the first time through the well-
35 M ikhail Bakunin: A Biographical Sketch
known book of Dr. Lorenz Stein. This book did not offer anything new,
but gave a sizeable survey of many socialistic trends and the reasoning
behind them; and in 1842 it introduced Bakunin, as he himself pointed
out, to this subject, which fascinated him.
In Berlin in 1840, he saw his sister Barbara, who had returned from
the death-bed of Stankevich in Italy. In Berlin and Dresden his younger
brother and Ivan Turgeniev were his closest friends. B y now his connec
tion with Russia was finally severed and he became a true exile, fully
accepting his status. The Russian government became aware of his radical
evolution and demanded his return to Russia. But Bakunin had no inten
tion of submitting, and in January, 1843, he took the decisive step of
going to Zurich with Georg Herwegh, the most famous poet of the time.
Herwegh returned to Zurich, then the center of literary, political, and
revolutionary propaganda for Germany, and to which, that spring, W il
helm WeitMng, the German Communist, transferred his activity from
French Switzerland.
During his Zurich sojourn from January 16 to the beginning of June,
Bakunin, having closely observed the political activities there, lost all his
republican political illusions, if he still had any. Through his personal
relations with Weitling, he became acquainted with the Communist ideol
ogy, which he considered a general revolutionary factor, but which, how
ever, never succeeded in captivating him. From that time up to 1848, he
had friendly relations with German Communists in Switzerland and in
Paris, and occasionally he called himself a Communist. In a letter to Rein
hold Solger, dated October, 1844, and in some other letters to Solger,
August Becker, and the wife of Professor V ogt, he expressed these ideas
up to 1847.
Opinions voiced by Bakunin at that time were published in the Deutsch-
Franzsische Jahrbcher (Paris, 1844) under the title B. to R. (Bakunin
to Ruge), dated Peter Island in the Bieler Lake, May, 1843, and several
articles entitled Der Communismus in the Sclnveitzerische Republikaner,
(Zurich, June 2, 6 and 13, 1843), signed XXX. I believe also that still
another article, in 1843, generally overlooked, was written by Bakunin.
Closer scrutiny of the articles would show that he was sympathetic and
hopefully, though not uncritically, inclined toward the expressions of
Socialism then current. Those movements championed a good cause, had
a very lofty goal, but they could not satisfy his aspirations for ideas and
systems that would really liberate mankind. He felt instinctively the absence
of freedom in these systems, and therefore he hesitated to accept com
pletely any of the ideas embodied in them.
Shortly before the arrest o f Weitling, Bakunin went to western Switzer
land and lived in Geneva, Lausanne, and also in Nyon. He tramped on
foot over the Alps to Berne, where he remained during the winter of 1844
until February. These travels and sojourns were influenced by his personal
 16 Mikhail Bakunin: A Biographical Sketch
relations: In Zurich he knew August Folien, the brother of Professor
V o gts wife, who lived in Berne; in Dresden he knew Madame Pescantini,
a German-Russian from Riga, who lived with her husband, an Italian
emigr, in Promenthoux near Nyon. His lifelong friend, the musician
A dolf Reichel, from East Prussia, whom he had met in Dresden, also had
come to Geneva, and together with him and the German Communist,
August Becker, he had crossed the Alps on foot. Reichel remained with
him in Berne in order to accompany him in February, 1844, to Brussels.
Bakunins long friendship with the sons o f the V o gt family began at
that time. The youngest V ogt, Adolf, and Adolf Reichel were the only
ones who, thirty-three years later, stood at Bakunins bier in Berne.
On July 21, 1843, the Swiss police issued an official report, signed b y
State Counselor Bluntschli, quoting many letters of Weitlings in which
Bakunins name was mentioned repeatedly. This put the Russian police
into motion, and in February, 1844, the Moscow ambassador in Berne
ordered Bakunin to return to Russia immediately. But Mikhail preferred
to move to Brussels. There he saw the first Polish migrs, and as he knew
everywhere how to meet the most important men in radical and revolu
tionary movements, who in turn considered him a highly interesting ac
quaintance, he became friendly with old Joachim Lelewel, one of the most
charming Poles of that period. Thus he got acquainted with the Polish
aspirations in their most exalted, but also in their most determined and
intransigent ideasthe demand for the historical Poland of 1772, which
included Lithuania, Little Russia, and W hite Russia.
As a Russian, but also as a democrat and internationalist, Bakunin main
tained, on the contrary, the right to autonomy and independence for the
non-Polish territories within these historic frontiers. Thus, in spite of
all his sympathy for the Poles and all his efforts to bring about co-operation,
it inevitably followed that the Poles always considered him an unwelcome
and disturbing element in their plans and never reciprocated his sincere
attempts toward solidarity with them. Since the Poles as well as Bakunin
saw in each other a revolutionary factor of some real -value, the subject
was rarely discussed frankly, and all attempts at mutual action were des
tined to failure. T o this was added the fact that the question of liberation
of the peasants and the distribution of land naturally separated Bakunin
from the powerful aristocratic Polish party, as did also their extreme
clericalism.
A fter a short visit to Paris in 1844, Mikhail persuaded his friend Reichel
to come and live with him in Paris, and they stayed there until 1847.
Bakunin endeavored to get in contact with the German radicals who lived
there, particularly with the circle around the weekly Vorwaerts, through
which he got acquainted with Marx and Engels. Many disagreeable quar
rels ensued between Ruge, Marx, and Herwegh, and lasted up to the
time when the German circle was broken up by expulsion of its members
37 Mikhail Bakunin: A Biographical Sketch
and the suspension o f the publication. Thereafter Bakunin did not take any-
sustained interest in the German movement, but he remained in friendly
relations with Herwegh and his wife, with Karl V ogt, a few German
Communists, and in general, with the Swiss acquaintances he had made
in 1843-44.
He became acquainted with French Socialists and political and lit
erary personalities of all shades of opinion, without getting very close to
any of them, with the exception of Proudhon, whose ideas and personality
attracted him, and who in turn showed interest in Bakunin. He also
met Russiansthe Dekabrist Nikolai Turgeniev, as well as many Russian
visitors to ParisPoles, Italians, and others. It was a period in which a great
many advanced ideas emerged, without, however, any one idea predom
inating. While the bourgeois system seemed to be nearing its full devel
opment unchallenged, Bakunin sensed that, underneath, the ferment of
the coming revolution was at work. W e arrived, Bakunin said in 1876,
according to a French Socialist, at the firm belief that we were wit
nessing the last days of the old civilization, and that the age of equality
would soon begin. V e r y few could resist this highly charged emotional
atmosphere in Paris; tw o months on the boulevards was usually long
enough to change a liberal into a Socialist.
In spite of this active and interesting life during the years 1845, 1846,
and 1847, Bakunin was not happy, because he felt more isolated than any
o f the others. Neither did he have a clear conception o f the future. T o
be more exact, these various Socialist trends were all narrowly sectarian,
each one opposed to the others; because they had no right of assembly
nor freedom for public activity, their adherents were limited to an arti
ficial life through books, magazines, and small groups. It is true that
Bakunin did not join any of the groups, but to conclude from this fact
that at that time he was no Socialist would be, in m y opinion, absolutely
wrong. H e did not find his conception of Socialism in any of the sects
then existing; indeed, he probably had not clearly formulated his own
ideas, as he had no practical incentive to do so. It is impossible to imagine
him as a follower of a certain trend or sectsuch as being a Fourierist,
Cabetist, :>r Marxist. The only man from whom he could derive part of
his Socialism then was Proudhon.
One of Bakunins Italian comrades, at the end of the Sixties, stated
that Bakunin had told him that, when reading Proudhons book, it had
suddenly flashed upon him: This is the right thing! That is how it
must have happened. Only Proudhon had at that time the idea of attaining
full freedom, of really abolishing the State, without rebuilding it in a new
form. This established a spiritual bond between the two men, though they
differed on certain details. That Bakunin understood the basic ideas of
Anarchism, which he approved, is shown by a few passages in his Intimate
Letters to Herwegh. By pure accident he had no opportunity to express
38 Mikhail Bakunin: A Biographical Sketch
them publicly. The voice he had raised in 1842 and 1843 was now
silenced (except in Slavonic affairs) and his work on Feuerbach, whose
ideas he wanted to publish in French, was not completed or was lost.
In December, 1844, Tsar Nikolai I issued, at the proposal of the Senate,
a decree depriving Bakunin o f all his civil and nobility rights, confiscating
his property in Russia and condemning him to lifelong exile in Siberia
should he ever be caught on Russian soil. He wrote a long letter on this
subject to the Paris Rforme (January 27, 1845) expressing his first free
opinion on Russia and foreshadowing his future writings in many respects.
His first statement on Poland was made in his letter to Le Constitutionel
(March 19, 1846) on the occasion of Russian persecution o f Polish Catholics.
Soon afterward he tried (as he also tells in his Confession of 1851) to
enter into conspirative relations with the Polish Democratic Central Com
mittee, the headquarters of which was in Versailles. His aim was revo
lution in Russia, a republican federation of all Slavic countries, and estab
lishment of a united and indivisible Slavic republic, administered feder-
atively for interior affairs and centralized politically for foreign affairs.
But nothing came out of these deliberations, mainly because he could not
offer the Poles anything except his good intentions. Before that, after the
appearance of his article in La Rforme, the Polish aristocrats, such as
Prince Adam O artoryski, as well as the democratic Poles, welcomed him,
and the Polish classical poet, Adam Mickiewicz, tried to attract him into
his mystical-federalist circle, which Bakunin, however, declined to enter.
Again in 1846 young refugee Poles from Cracow approached him, and it
was this group which invited him to speak at the meeting of November
29, 1847, in commemoration of the Polish insurrection o f 1830.
A few months before, in 1847, Bakunin again met with Herzen, Belinsky,
and other Russian friends in Paris, and though that reunion was amicable,
those friends did not respond to his plea that conspiratory action be planned
for a revolutionary movement in Russia. There is no evidence that he
knew of the efforts of the group of Petrashevsky and Speshnev at that
time. Thus he could not help knowing or feeling that he was quite alone
so far as Russian problems were concerned.
On November 29 he made his famous speech in Paris in favor o f a
revolutionary conciliation between Poles and Russians. Thereupon, at the
request of the Russian ambassador, he was expelled from France, and on
December 19, he went to Brussels, where he met many Poles as well as
the Communist circle of Karl Marx, whom he greatly disliked. On Feb
ruary 14, 1848, he spoke again at a meeting called by Lelewel to form
brotherly tries between Polish and Russian democrats. According to
Bakunin's Confession he also spoke o f the great future of the Slavs, des
tined to rejuvenate the Western world, o f the break-up o f Austria, etcetera.
The full text o f that speech was never published.
The Russian Embassy, headed b y Count Kisselev, also tried to ruin
39 Mikhail Bakunin: A Biographical Sketch
his reputation b y setting rumors afloat that he actually was a Russian agent,
who had exceeded his orders. This slander was passed on to the French
government b y Polish intermediaries* Bakunin answered in an open letter
of February 7, 1848, to Count Duchatel, then Minister of Interior, but
after the February revolution, the same source spread this calumny in
democratic circles and cast a shadow of doubt over all the rest of
Bakunins life, beginning with 1848-49, the last year o f his activity at
that time.
W hen the longed-for revolution finally came, Bakunins jo y knew no
bounds. Even his crestfallen Confession of 1851 contained an enthusiastic
description of the life and activities of the people o f Paris, in which he
took part up to April, 1848, La Reforme of March 13 carried a lengthy
article b y him, in which his ideas were summarized. But what grieved him
most was that he saw no sign o f an approaching Russian revolution, to
accomplish which he felt driven to give his utmost energies. Russian power
was in the service of the counter-revolution, and in fact it did intervene
in Hungary in 1849, to suppress the revolution there. In 1848 a clash
between the rebelling countries of Europe and the Russia of Tsar Nikolai I
appeared probable, and the Poles worked toward this goal. Bakunin wanted
to prevent that conflict, and the idea of a Slavic federation seemed to him
the proper means.
Such a federation was intended to unite all Slavs, Poles, and Russians as
well, under the battle-cry o f liberating the Slavs living under the rule of
Prussia, Austro-Hungary, and Turkey. Bakunin had no resources for this
propaganda, so he approached Flocon, Louis Blanc, and Albert and Ledru
Rollin, who reluctantly lent him 2,000 francs. For everything else he was
dependent on the Poles* He went to Germany, where the slander launched
by the Russian Embassy followed him, as did also the lie that he was
preparing an attempt on the life o f the Tsar. This brought about another
expulsion. These slanders likewise affected his trial in Saxony (1849-50),
and in 1851 were to help determine his fate in Russia.
His journey took him through Baden to Frankfort and Cologne, where
he made the final break with Marx on account o f Herwegh* From there
he went to Berlin, where the police stopped him from traveling on to
Posen; from Berlin he went to Leipzig and Breslau, where he again met
many Poles; then he continued on to the Slav Congress in Prague, in
which he actively participated. This congress was followed by the bloody
but abortive Whitsun-week insurrection in June, 1848, which Bakunin
wanted to promote and intensify. His return to Breslau and to Berlin was
followed by his expulsion from Prussia and Saxony, but finally in the fall
and winter he found a pleasant and safe refuge in Koethen, Anhalt State,
at that time an oasis of freedom in Germany, where certain Cabinet ministers
o f that state, old friends of Max Stirner and his comrades, were his table
companions in the local Rathskeller.
 40 M ikhail Bakunin: A Biographical Sketch
Later, when the conspiracy became more active, Bakunin returned to
Leipzig. His life in the underground there was interrupted b y a still
more secret journey to Prague, and finally he went to Dresden to be
nearer to Bohemia. While he was there the May revolution of 1849 broke
o u t H e gave all his energy to it, and shared the fate o f other leaders of
the revolution, when, after several sleepless nights, totally exhausted, he
was arrested in Chemnitz (Saxony) on the night of M ay 9. This put an
end to his activities for many years to come.

Bakunins ideas in that period can be ascertained from a few documents

o f the Prague Slav Congress, particularly from the Charter of a New
Slavic Policy and from the pamphlet Appeal to the Slavs published in the
fall o f 1848, and other statements o f that time and later. The most extensive
account o f his plans is set down in his Confession of 1851. T o this can
be added a few intimate letters, particularly to Herwegh, and his long
defense plea at the trial in Saxony. I am familiar only with extracts of
this plea contained in a letter to his lawyer, but the whole plea as well
as the statements in the preliminary questioning are available for publication.
From these sources we see how he, who in the months immediately
following February 24, certainly was inspired b y the purest revolutionary
spirit, gradually became more and more imbued with nationalist ideas,
until, after the events in Prague and Breslau, he indulged in the most
commonplace expressions of hate against everything German This made
him fee! impelled, as he says in his Confession to Nikolai I, to write to the
Tsar asking forgiveness for his sins and imploring him to put himself
at the head of the Slavs as their savior and father, and to carry the banner
of Slavdom into Western Europe.
His good common sense prevented him, however, from finishing this
letter, and he destroyed it. Nothing compelled him to record this fact,
which, b y the way, is not so surprising, since nationalism unites men o f
all ideologies, and the revolutionist and the Tsar stood here on common
ground.
Autumn in 1848 brought about a change in Bakunins attifCTde. He came
out in favor o f common struggles o f all peoplesSlavs, Magyars, and Ger
mansagainst the oppressors, their governments. B y organizing and head
ing Czech and German secret societies to instigate a revolutionary move
ment in Bohemia, he made extraordinary efforts to help German democ
racy which, at that time, was preparing for the struggles of 1849. But
only the German democrats in Saxony started a revolt (in May, 1849),
while the premature Czech conspiracy was nipped in the bud by many
arrests, ending in a lengthy trial and cruel sentences to long imprisonment
of many young Czechs and Germans in Bohemia. In general, it can be
said, however, that Bakunins activity in 1848 lost much o f its effectiveness
because of its close relation to nationalism. It was therefore fortunate for
 4i Mikhail Bakunin: A Biographical Sketch
the clarifying of his ideas that the May revolution in Dresden offered him
such a welcome opportunity for objective revolutionary activity unmarred
by nationalism.
Next, Bakunin spent one year in Saxon prisons in Dresden and in the
fortress o f Koenigstein, up to June 13, *850, when a death sentence against
him was commuted to imprisonment for life. That his spirit was unbroken
appears in his letters from the fortress to A d olf and Matilde Reichel. He
was then extradited to Austria, where for one year he was chained in his
cell and had to submit to endless questioning in Prague and Oimutz till
1851probably the grimmest experience o f his life.
This was followed by a new condemnation to death with immediate
commutation of the sentencebut extradition to Russia. Not knowing what
to expect, Bakunin viewed his fate with dread, but was pleasantly sur
prised when he soon found himself treated relatively well as a state
prisoner of importance, and also considered as such in the Peter-and-Paul
fortress in St. Petersburg,
A fter two months, around August, 1851, the Tsar sent Count O rlov
to see Bakunin in the fortress and to ask for a confession from him.
Bakunin really did write this, as it became known in i9zi. The document
did not change his situation, and Nikolais successor, Alexander II, pointed
out quite correctly that he did not see any repentance in that confession.
Opinions may vary concerning this document, but it contained nothing
that would have endangered any person or compromised any cause, em
bodying, rather, details interesting to a biographer. Anything in it which
may appear unsavory is the result of the nationalist psychosis that influ
enced Bakunin at the time, and from which few are entirely free.
Solitary confinement in the Peter-and-Paul fortress and later, during
the Crimean war, in Schlusselburg, was to him a spiritual torment, despite
the fact that his manner o f life and his treatment were tolerable. Life in
prison caused his body to lose its youthfulness and to assume the mis
shapen form, which later on was one o f the causes o f his early death. I
have no knowledge o f his letters from prison, except o f the one addressed
to Alexander II in 1857, but even if I knew them I would not con
sider myself entitled to pronounce any judgement. He was near to com
mitting suicide, when his family finally succeeded in having him sent to
Siberia, after Tsar Alexander II had extorted from him the letter of
February 27, 1857 which gave such a moving description of the effects
of solitary confinement.
Bakunin was allowed to spend a day in Pryamukhino where he saw
his mother for the last time and met again his surviving sisters and
brothers after the seventeen-year separation since 1840. He was then taken
to Tomsk in Western Siberia, where, within the usual limitations, he could
move about freely.
He adapted himself quite well to Siberian conditions by getting inter
 42 Mikhail Bakunin: ^ Biographical Sketch
ested in them and in the Russian expansion toward Eastern Siberia, down
the Amur toward the sea. Envisaging a future Siberian independence, he
encouraged such ideas among young men like the explorer Potanin, who
later, in i 865 , had to stand trial in Omsk with other youthful Siberians for
separatist attempts. Bakunin became acquainted with many exiled Poles,
whom he wanted to impress with the necessity of a conciliation between
Poles and Russians.
W hile he was giving French lessons to some members o f the Polish
family Kwiatkowski, he came to know one of the daughters, Antonia,
whom he married in 1858. There are memoirs of his relations with the
Dekabrists and the followers of Petrashevsky (the latter b y Emanuel T oll),
though later on sharp differences arose between Petrashevsky and Bakunin.
Nikolai Muraviev-Amurski, Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, also a
relative of Mikhails mother, came to see him. In 1833 he had known both
Muraviev and his father well. Finally Bakunins wish to be transferred to
Eastern Siberia was granted and in 1859 he arrived in Irkutsk.
For a while that year he traveled for a business concern in the Far
East, but this occupation was only temporary, because he expected a full
pardon and the right to return to Russia, though if that hope failed, he
dreamed of a not too difficult escape. He realized that the Governor-
General was a brutal despot, but their nationalism and their hatred o f the
Germans united them to such a degree that Bakunin condoned Muravievs
bad characteristics. The correspondence which he resumed in i860 with
Alexander Herzen, whose periodical Kolokol [The Bell] was then at
the peak of its influence, contains hymns of praise for Muraviev. This may
be explained by Bakunins increasing nationalist psychosis, induced and
nourished b y the expansionist ideas o f the officials and exploiters who sur
rounded him in Siberia, causing him to overlook the plight o f their victims.
Finally Muraviev left Siberia without being able to do anything for
Bakunin, and that relieved him of any compunction which might have
restrained him from escaping while a relative was Governor. He left Irkutsk
on June 18, 1861, sailed down the Amur River, succeeded in boarding an
American ship, and, after passing through several Japanese ports, M n Fran
cisco, Panama, and N ew York, he arrived in London on December 27 and
went straight to the home of Herzen and Ogarev, who received him like
a brother. In Yokohama he had met up with a fellow-fighter of the Dresden
M ay revolt, and in the United States he talked with comrades of the
1848 revolution.
From San Francisco he had written to Herzen that he would continue
his efforts, begun in that year, toward Slavic federalism. In short, from
the first hour of his freedom he was ready to resume with unimpaired
energy his activity, interrupted in 1849, aiming at a Russian peasant revo
lution, Slavic national wars for independence, and Slavic federation. In
the Italy o f 1859 and in the actions o f Garibaldi he recognized the way,
 43 Mikhail Bakunin: A Biographical Sketch
perceiving many symptoms of the rising tide toward liberty, and, as in
1848, Bakunin again was ready to do his share. His Socialism, however,
was deeply buried beneath his nationalist psychosis.
That appears still more evident from his first open letter entitled
T o Russian, Polish, and all Slavic Friends, published on February i j , 1862;
from the pamphlet The People's Cause: Romanov, Pugachev, or Pestel?,
issued in London in 1863, and from shorter articles; from Herzens account
in his Posthumous Writings; and from Bakunins own letters, some o f
which appeared in the St. Petersburg periodical Byloe (The Past).
There were important and impressive open movements in Russia
(Tchemishevskys and the Youth movement); secret organizations o f un
known and constantly shifting scope, such as Zemlya y Volya (Land and
Freedom), and the great liberal movement headed b y Herzen and Ogarev;
the Zemstvos, in which several brothers o f Bakunin distinguished them
selves in Tver, etcetera. Here also may be mentioned the sectarian move
ment of Ogarev and Kelsiev, the revolutionary possibilities o f which were
so extremely overrated. These movements, which needed many years to
reach their full development, were suddenly followed or joined b y the
Polish movement in the violent form of an insurrection, which compli
cated the situation considerably. O nly Bakunin and a Russian military
organization (headed b y a sympathetic officer from W arsaw named Po-
tebnya) were willing to co-operate sincerely with the Poles. A t the same
time, however, the old dissensions between Bakunin and the Poles con
tinued, and there were for example, bitter polemics with Mieroslawski.
Though this situation, in 1862 and 1863, offered innumerable oppor
tunities for action b y Bakunin, embroilments repeatedly ensued, and led
more to confusion than to solutions. Thus, in spite of his good intentions,
his activities produced only meager results. He conspired in all directions;
had negotiations in Paris; and on February 21, 1863, he went via Hamburg
and Copenhagen to Stockholm, where he remained until autumn, and
where, after many vicissitudes, he was reunited with his wife, who had
found her w ay out of Siberia. He was not connected with the Polish
incursion of Lapinski, whom he met in Malmo, but he would have been
willing to go to Russia, if he had sensed the 'beginning of any revolu
tionary movement there. This element lacking, he did his best to influence
public opinion in Sweden about events in Finland. His speeches and articles
in the large dailies created a sensation, and he was fairly lionized, but
was unable to get armed assistance from the Poles.
Bakunin never abandoned his attitude in public, but he had such bad
experiences with many personalities in the Polish movement and with the
elusive Russian secret organizations, that in the fall of 1863 he withdrew
entirely from Slavic national movements, and probably reconsidered the
situation thoroughly. It also became apparent to him that further work
with Herzen and Ogarev in London would be impossible. Bonapartist
 44 Mikhail Bakunin: A Biographical Sketch
France was out o f the question for a permanent sojourn, but there was
one country where he would be able to remain-Italywhich had an active
radical party. A t the end of 1863 he left London, and by slow stages,
crossing Belgium, France, and Switzerland, he reached Italy. From that
time onward he began anew to participate in the international revolution
ary movement.

I do not know whether, during that journey, in the course of which

he met Proudhon, Elie and Elise Reclus, V ogt, Garibaldi, and other old
and new friends, he intended to make direct connection with those men,
or if he went just for the purpose of meeting old friends and gathering
information. His new place of residence was Florence, where he stayed
through the first half o f 1864. In August he went to London and Sweden,
and in November, going back to London and then to Brussels and Paris,
he returned to Florence. W hile on those travels, the purpose of which is
not quite clear, he was visited by Marx in London, and in Paris saw
Proudhon for the last time. The summer of 1865 found him in Sorrento,
and till August, 1867, he dwelt in Naples and vicinity. Bakunin enjoyed
his sojourn in Italy, particularly the simple, natural life of the people, and
from the fail of 1869 until his death seven years later he lived in small
towns in the Swiss canton o f Ticino.
H e saw the defeat of the Polish revolution of 1863, which was led by
the feudal lords, but he hoped to live to see a peasant upheaval and a
new European revolution in the offing. Inasmuch as he maintained con
tacts with the leading men in the militant parties and their following among
young people, especially in Italy, he undoubtedly became aware o f two
great obstacles: The fact that the national movements were inextricably
blended with the designs of the StatesNapoleon HI in particular was
behind theseand that the ideologies of the young people were hopelessly
circumscribed by religious ideas and by the pseudo-Socialism of Mazzini.
Therefore Bakunin felt compelled to assemble and educate a group of dear-
thinking revolutionists freed from the fetters of religion and religious philos
ophy, and opposed to the idea of the State, and to establish amohg them close
contacts which would facilitate international activities.
He tried to use the Free Mason movement for that purpose, and ex
plained his ideas with great lucidity to Italian lodges, but failed to win
them over He then worked alone and did succeed in forming an intimate
circle of able persons from various countriesa secret society, so to speak,
which may be designated as the Fraternit Internationale. Through per
sonal contact and extensive correspondence he worked tirelessly to clarify
the ideas of his comrades, and to free them from a variety of nationalist
proconceptions. Most of them made valuable contributions to the inter
national Socialist movement in later years.
Through this activity, begun in Florenceperhaps during his first visit
 45 M ikhail Bakunin: A Biographical Sketch
to that cityor even earlier in London, Bakunin systematized his anti-
religious, atheist, anti-State, and Anarchist W eltanschaung, and of course
also formulated his Socialist, national, and federalist ideas. This was done
in comprehensive programs and program outlines for closely knit groups;
in elaborate expositions, which he probably wrote first for the Free
Masons; in occasional articles, and in his careful and widespread cor
respondence. Represented in these are all the ideas with which he was
equipped when he joined the First International in 1868. The labor move
ment as such was given the least consideration because in 1864 it had
hardly existed. Bakunin had no personal contact with the insignificant
labor movement in London in 1862-63, and in Italy there was no such
movement at all. The International, when Marx spoke to him about it
in 1864, was then in its initial stage, and the followers of Proudhon in
Paris were not a revolutionary element for action in Bakunins sense.
These circumstances explain w h y he acted alone and created by himself
an international revolutionary fighting group.
W hen later, in September, 1867, European democrats at their Geneva
Congress formed the League for Peace and Freedom, Bakunin considered
this international organization an appropriate medium within which he
and his friends in the Fraternit could forward and spread their ideas. In
1868 he submitted his thoughts to this effect to the Geneva and Berne
Congresses, outlining them in his Federalism, Socialism, and Antitheologism.
He also was notably active in the organizing committee o f the League
in 1867-68, while living in V evey and Clrens. But the bourgeois Socialists
proved deaf to Socialist ideas, whereupon Bakunin and some of his friends
left the League, joined the [Geneva section of the] International, and
founded the Alliance of Socialist Democracy, within which of course, the
old secret group o f the Fraternit Internationale would continue to exist.
Under these conditions, which came about quite by themselves, but
the intrinsic nature o f which remained unknown and incomprehensible
to all outsidersincluding MarxBakunin joined the labor movement o f
the period represented b y the International. This movement developed
after 1864, principally in its theories, and spread rather slowly. O nly after
1868 did it show a more pronounced revolutionary spirit, as manifested
by strikes and in the Congress o f Brussels. Thus the time was most oppor
tune, and between the end of 1868 and the summer of 1869 the Socialtt
movement in Geneva was revived, and temporarily wrested from the hands
of the local politicians.
The Swiss Jura Federation was won for the anti-authoritarian Socialist
concepts, revolutionary Socialism in France was considerably invigorated,
particularly in Lyons and Marseilles, the International in Spain was
founded and from the very beginning inspired by Anarchist ideas, the
Italian International was built on the foundation laid many years before,
and those ideas also had certain influence in Russia. In various articles by
 4<S Mikhail Bakunin: A Biographical Sketch
Bakunin in Egalit o f Geneva his propaganda presented to the workers the
most comprehensive Socialist thought and aims with marvelous clarity and
objectivity.
A t the same time he worked at selecting, educating, and co-ordinating
elements capable of really revolutionary initiative. It was through Bakunin
that the international was revived and received its real incentive. Though
the International of Belgium and Paris showed some vigor, it never rose
above mediocrity, Bakunin and his friends were the first to arouse it, and
the Paris Commune did the rest.
There is a wealth of documentary material and reminiscences about
Bakunins international activity in the period from the fall o f 1868 to the
summer of 1874. The versatility and intensity o f his work can be recog
nized in the daily notes he wrote during tw o o f those years, and in
numerous manuscripts, publication of which began in 1895. Among his
outstanding efforts were those in the sections of the Alliance and in the
editorial office of Egalit, his propaganda in the Jura region o f Switzerland
in the spring of 1869, in the last period o f the Paris Commune in 1871,
and particularly during the preparation o f a Commune revolt in Besancon,
in order to come to the rescue of the Paris Commune.
Too, there were his attempts to initiate in the Southwest and South
of Franceduring the Franco-Prussian W ar of 1871a social-revolutionary
action which would refuse to recognize the State, but would promote the
creation o f free Communes, to be seconded b y similar movements in
Spain and Italy to help that in France. These were ambitious plans for
which Bakunin risked his life to no purpose in Lyons in September of that
year, though he succeeded in organizing the demonstration o f September
29. But after further attempts in Marseilles he had to return to Locarno.
The Russian episode o f 1869-70 in connection with Nechayev makes
a notable chapter in itself, which, however, should not be judged
without full knowledge of the documentary material involved. More satis
factory are the reports on Bakunins Russian propaganda in Zurich in
1872-73, the famous summer of 1872 which saw him in Zurich and in the
Jura region for a longer period, and the reports on the Russian printing
plants o f his friends in Zurich and London, which published Several im
portant works of his, among them Statism and Anarchism, which, unfor
tunately, like so many o f his writings, was never completed.
W hen Mazzini, the eternal enemy of Socialism, denounced the Paris
Commune, Bakunin came to its defense and to that of the International
in a brilliant pamphlet issued in Milan. This led many young Italians to
communicate with him and to form sections o f the International, which
had an inner revolutionary core of militant comrades closely connected
with Bakunin, That was the Alliance Revolutionaire Socialiste, the very
soul of the Italian International. The Spanish International, the Alianza,
had a similar core; Bakunins intimate friend and comrade, Fanelli, had
 47 Mikhail Bakunin: A Biographical Sketch
organized it in 1868 during a journey to Barcelona and Madrid, arranged
by Bakunins circle. In 1870 and again in the summer o f 1873 Bakunin
was on the point o f going to Spain, where he would have found in Barce
lona his most convinced and reliable followers, but circumstances prevented
him from going there. Finally, in August, 1874, he went to Italy, where
preparations for an insurrectional movement were under w ay in many
places. He was in Bologna on the night of the Prati di Caprara, and after
the defeat of that movement he fled to Switzerland, which was his last
revolutionary peregrination.
It is well known that these activities, which aimed at the spreading and
revolutionary realization o f the ideas of collective Anarchismand thus of
anti-authoritarian Socialismwere bitterly resented and hated b y Karl
Marx and his followers. T h ey wanted to found Social-Democratic labor
movements, or if the opportunity arose-a situation which, however, they
themselves did not intend to bring about by revolutionary actionto seize
power as dictators of the Revolution and to establish an authoritarian
peoples State. T h ey hated Bakunin because his and all other liberal-revolu
tionary activities opposed and thwarted these objectives. This bitter hatred,
which often assumed most repulsive forms, because of their complete
ignorance of Bakunins real objectives and actions (as appears from the
published correspondence between Marx and Engels), expressed itself b y
the spreading of slander as well as by administrative chicanery and arbi
trary decisions in the International, the executive committee of which in
London was dominated b y Marx.
A local political party in Geneva and several henchmen such as Nicho
las Utin and Paul Lafargue helped Marx in this job. These intrigues reached
their peak at the Hague Congress of the International (September, 1872),
where, through a majority obtained b y tricks and w ily maneuvers,
Bakunin was expelled from the International, and, in addition, was slandered
at the instigation of Marx. A ll those facts have been investigated fully
and so thoroughly explained that the final judgement, now entirely pos
sible, is certainly a blot on the memory o f Marx and Engels.
These arbitrary dictatorial tactics at the London Conference o f 1871
and the Hague Congress of 1872, which were aimed at altering completely
the spirit of the International, resulted in a closer union o f the anti-
authoritarian sections and federations. Beginning with the answer to the
Jura circular of November, 1871, this unity was emphasized by a
declaration o f the minority o f the Hague Congress, and the Congress o f
St. Imier, Switzerland (September, 1872), and brought about the reorgani
zation o f the International at the Geneva Congress of 1873, while the organ
ization of the authoritarian remnant of the International collapsed miser
ably. Bakunin lived to see this victory of the libertarian trend, the effects
o f which, however, were thwarted temporarily by the general reaction of
the Seventies, following the defeat of the Commune of Paris. Nevertheless
 48 Mikhail Bakunim A Biographical Sketch
this victory led directly to the spiritual consolidation o f all freedom-loving
revolutionary elements, to whom the future belongs.
A fter his return from exile, Bakunins personal situation, owing to
some special circumstances, was somewhat better up to 1868, but later
he again was beset by poverty and worries, which were mitigated only
in 1872 to 1874 by the Cafiero episode. But after this he felt even more
keenly his destitution and privation, from which death alone finally re
lieved him. His health, impaired b y his various imprisonments, had broken
down, causing him much suffering and bringing his life to an end at the
age of not quite sixty-two. Nevertheless, up to his last years, which he
spent in Lugano, he preserved the lucidity of his spirit, and all his con
cepts, desires, and hopes. In June, 1876, he went, hopelessly ill, to Beme
and died there on July 1, attended b y the friend o f his youth. Professor
V ogt, who was his physician, and b y the musician, A dolf Reichel. His
ideas remain fresh and will live forever.
The Political Philosophy o f Bakunin
S C IE N T IF IC A N A R C H IS M
 PA R T I

Philosophy
CHA PT ER I The World-Outlook

Nature Is Rational Necessity. This is not the place to enter into

philosophical speculations on the nature o f Being. Yet, since I have to use
this word Nature frequently, it is necessary to make m y meaning clearly
undemood.
I could say that Nature is the sum of all things that have real existence.
This, however, would give an utterly lifeless concept of Nature, which,
on the contrary, appears to us as being all life and movement. For that
matter, what is the sum of things? Things that exist today will not exist
tomorrow. Tomorrow they will not pass away but will be entirely trans
formed. Therefore I shall find myself much nearer to the truth if I say:
Nature is the sum of actual transformations of things that are and will
ceaselessly be produced within its womb. In order to render more precise
the idea o f this sum or totality, I shall lay down the following proposition
as a basic premise:
Whatever exists, all the beings which constitute the undefined totality
o f the Universe, all things existing in the world, whatever their particular
nature may be in respect to quality or quantitythe most diverse and the
most similar things, great or small, close together or far apartnecessarily
and unconsciously exercise upon one another, whether directly or indi
rectly, perpetual action and reaction. A ll this boundless multitude of par
ticular actions and reactions, combined in one general movement, produces
and constitutes what we call Life, Solidarity, Universal Causality, Nature.
Call it, if you find it amusing, God, the Absoluteit really does not matter
provided you do not attribute to the word G od a meaning different from
the one we have just established: the universal, natural, necessary, and
real, but in no w ay predetermined, preconceived, or foreknown combina
tion of the infinity o f particular actions and reactions which all things
having real existence incessantly exercise upon one another. Thus defined,
this Universal Solidarity, Nature viewed as an infinite universe, is imposed
upon our mind as a rational necessity. . . .*
Universal Causality and Creative Dynamics. It stands to reason that
this Universal Solidarity cannot have the character o f an absolute first
cause; on the contrary, it is merely the result produced by the simul-

N O TE: The side-heads set in black-faced type at the beginning of paragraphs are
Maximoff s annotations, while the light-faced text is Bakunins.
 54 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

taneous action of particular causes, the totality o f which constitutes uni

versal causality. It creates and will always be created anew; it is the com
bined unity, everlastingly created by the infinite totality o f the ceaseless
transformations of all existing things; and at the same time it is the creator
of those very things; each point acts upon the W hole (here the Universe
is the resultant product); and the W hole acts upon every point (here the
Universe is the Creator).
T h e Creator of the Universe. Having laid down this definition, I can
say, without fear of being ambiguous, that Universal Causality, Nature,
creates the worlds. It is this causality that has determined the mechanical,
physical, geologic, and geographic structure o f our earth, and, having
covered its surface with the splendors of vegetable and animal life, it still
continues to create, in the human world, society in all its past, present,
and future developments.2
Nature Acts in Conformity to Law. W hen man begins to observe,
with steady and prolonged attention, that part of Nature which surrounds
him and which he discovers within himself, he will finally notice that all
things are governed by inherent laws which constitute their own particular
nature; that each thing has its own peculiar form o f transformation and
action; that in this transformation and action there is a succession of facts
and phenomena which invariably repeat themselves under the same given
conditions; and which, under the influence o f new and determining con
ditions, change in an equally regular and determined manner. This con
stant reproduction of the same facts through the action of the same causes
constitutes precisely Natures method of legislation: order in the infinite
diversity of facts and phenomena.
T h e Supreme Law. The sum of all known and unknown laws which
operate in the universe constitutes its only and supreme law.8
In the Beginning Was the Act. It stands to reason that in the Universe
thus conceived there can be neither a priori ideas nor preconceived and
preordained laws. Ideas, the idea of God included, exist upon the earth
only in so far as they are produced b y the mind. It is therefore clear that
they emerged much later than the natural facts, much later than the laws
governing such facts. T h ey are right if they correspond to those laws;
they are false if they contradict the latter. |
A s to natural laws, those manifest themselves under this ideal or ab
stract form o f law only through the human mind, reproduced b y our
brain on the basis of more or less exact observation of things, phenomena,
and the succession of facts; they assume the form of human ideas o f a
nearly spontaneous character. Prior to the emergence of human thought,
they were unrecognized as laws and existed only in the state of real, natu
ral processes, which, as I have pointed out above, are always determined
b y the indefinite concurrence of particular conditions, influences, and
causes which regularly repeat themselves. The term Nature thus precludes
 55 T h e W orld Outlook
any mystic or metaphysical idea of a Substance, Final Cause, or provi
dentially contrived and directed creation.4
Creation, B y the word creation we do not imply thologie or meta
physical creation, nor do we mean thereby artistic, scientific, industrial,
or any other form of creation which presupposes an individual creator. B y
this term we simply mean the infinitely complex product of an illimitable
number of widely diverse causeslarge and small, some of them known,
but most o f them still remaining unknownwhich, having combined at a
given moment (not without cause, o f course, but without any premedita
tion or any plans mapped in advance) have produced this fact.
Harmony In Nature. But, we are told, were this the case, history and
the destinies o f human society would present nothing but chaos; they
would be mere playthings of chance. On the contrary, only when history
is free from divine and human arbitrariness, does it present itself in all the
imposing, and at the same time rational, grandeur of a necessary develop
ment, like the organic and physical nature of which it is the direct con
tinuation. Nature, notwithstanding the inexhaustible wealth and variety
o f beings of which it is constituted, does not b y any means present chaos,
but instead a magnificently organized world wherein every part is logically
correlated to all the other parts.
T h e Logic of Divinity. But, we also are told, there must have been
a regulator. N ot at all! A regulator, were he even God, would only
thwart by his arbitrary intervention the natural order and logical devel
opment o f things. And indeed we see that in all the religions the chief
attribute of Divinity consists in being superiorthat is, in being contrary
to all logic and possessing a logic o f its own: the logic of natural impossi
bility or of absurdity.5
T h e Logic of Nature. T o say that God is not contrary to logic is
to say that he is absolutely identical with it, that he himself is nothing but
logic; that is, the natural course and development of real things. In other
words, it is to say that God does not exist. The existence of G od has
meaning only in so far as it connotes the negation o f natural laws. Hence
the inescapable dilemma follows:
T h e D ilem m a. G od existshence there can be no natural laws, and
the world presents mere chaos; or the world is not chaos, and it possesses
inherent orderhence G od does not exist.6
T h e Axiom. W hat is logic if not the natural course and development
o f things, or the natural process b y means of which many determining
causes produce a fact? Consequently, we can enunciate this very simple
and at the same time decisive axiom:
Whatever is natural is logical, and whatever is logical is realized or is
bound to be realized in the natural world: in Naturein the proper sense
o f the wordand in its subsequent developmentin the natural history of
human society.7
 56 TH E PO L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
T h e First Cause. But w hy and how do the laws o f the natural and
social world exist if no one created them and if no one is governing them?
W hat gives them their invariable character? It is not within my power to
solve this problem, norso far as I knowhas anyone ever found an answer
to it, and doubtless nobody ever will find one.8
Natural and social laws exist in and are inseparable from the real world,
from the totality of things and facts of which we are the products and
effects, unless we also in our turn become the relative causes of new
beings, things, and facts. This is all we know, and, I believe, all we can
know. Besides, how can we find the first cause if it does not exist? W hat
we have called Universal Causality is in itself only the result of all the
particular causes operating in the Universe.*
Metaphysics, Theology, Science, and the First Cause. The theologian
and the metaphysician would forthwith avail themselves o f this forced and
necessary eternal human ignorance in order to impose their fallacies and
fancies upon mankind. But science scorns this trivial consolation: it detests
these as ridiculous and dangerous illusions. W hen not able to go on with
its investigations, when it sees itself compelled to call them off for the
time being, it will prefer to say, I do not know," rather than present
unverifiable hypotheses as absolute truths. And science has done more than
that: it has succeeded in proving, with a certitude that leaves nothing
more to be desired, the absurdity and insignificance of all theological and
metaphysical conceptions. But it did not destroy them in order to have
them replaced by new absurdities. W hen it has reached the limit o f its
knowledge, it will say in all honesty: I do not know." But never will it
draw any inferences from what it does not and cannot know.10
Universal Science is an Unattainable Ideal. Thus universal science
is an ideal which man will never be able to realize. He will always be
forced to content himself with the science of his own world, and even
when this science reaches out to the most distant star, he still will know
little about it. Real science embraces only the solar system, our terrestrial
sphere, and whatever appears and passes upon this earth. But even within
these limits, science is still too vast to be encompassed b y one man or
one generation, the more so because the details of our world lose them
selves in the infinitesimal and its diversity transcends any definite boun
daries.11
T h e Hypothesis of Divine Legislation Leads to the Negation of Nature.
If harmony and conformity to law reign in the universe, it is not because
the universe is governed according to a system preconceived and pre
ordained b y Supreme W ill. The theological hypothesis of divine legisla
tion leads to a manifest absurdity and to the negation not only of any
order but of Nature itself. Laws are real only in so far as they are insep
arable from the things themselves; that is, they are not ordained b y an
extraneous power Those laws are but the simple manifestations or con-
 57 T he W orld Outlook
tinuous variations of things and combinations of varied transient but real
facts.
Nature Itself Does Not Know Any Laws. AH this constitutes what
we call Nature. . . . But Nature itself does not know any laws. It works
unconsciously, representing an infinite variety of phenomena inevitably
manifesting and repeating themselves. And it is only because of this
inevitability of action that order can and actually does exist in the
Universe.12
T h e Unity of the Physical and Social Worlds. The human mind and
the science it creates study those characteristics and combinations of things,
and systematize and classify them with the aid o f experiments and observa
tion, such classifications and systematizations being termed laws o f Nature.18
Science thus far has had for its object only the mental, reflected, and,
in so far as it is possible, the systematic reproduction of laws inherent in
the material as well as the intellectual and moral life of the physical and
social worldsboth of which, in reality, constitute but one natural world.14
T h e Classification of Natural Laws. These laws fall into two cate
gories: those of general laws and those of particular and special laws. Mathe
matical, mechanical, physical, and chemical laws are, for instance, general
laws which manifest themselves in everything that has real existence; in
short, they are inherent to matterthat is, inherent in the real and only
universal being, the true basis of all existing things.
Universal Laws. The laws of equilibrium, of the combination and
mutual interaction of forces or of mechanical movement; the law of gravi
tation, of vibration of bodies, o f heat, light, electricity, of chemical com
position and decompositionare inherent in all things that exist. These
laws make no exception for the manifestations of will, feeling, and intelli
gence which constitute the ideal world o f man and which are but the
material functions of organized and living matter in animal bodies, and
especially those of the human animal. Consequently all these laws are
general laws, since all the various ordersknown and unknownof real
existence are subject to their operation.
Particular Laws. But there also are particular laws which are relevant
only to particular orders of phenomena, facts, and things, and which form
their own systems or groups; like, for instance, the system of geologic
laws, the system of laws pertaining to vegetable and animal organisms,
and, finally, laws governing the ideal and social development o f the most
accomplished animal on earthman.
Interaction and Cohesion in Nature. N ot that laws pertaining to one
system are altogether foreign to the laws underlying other systems. In
Nature everything is much more closely interlinked than what is generally
thoughtand perhaps even desiredb y the pedants of science in the
interests of greater precision in their work of classification.16
The invariable process b y means of which a natural phenomenon,
5 8 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
extrinsic or intrinsic, is constantly reproduced, and the invariable succes
sion of facts constituting this phenomenon, are precisely what we call
its law. However, this constancy and this recurrent pattern are not abso
lute in character.17*
Th e Limits of Man's Understanding of the Universe. W e shall never
succeed in envisaging, much less in comprehending, this one real system
of the universe, in one w ay infinitely outspread, in another infinitely
specialized. W e shall never succeed in doing it, for our investigations are
brought to a halt before two infinities-the infinitely great and the infini
tesimally small.18
its details are inexhaustible. Man will never be able to recognize more
than an infinitesimally small part thereof. Our star-spangled sky with its
multitude of suns forms only an imperceptible speck in the immensity of
space, and though our eye embraces it, we know almost nothing about it;
we must content ourselves with a tiny bit of knowledge about our solar
system, which we assume to be in perfect harmony with the rest of the
Universe. For if such harmony did not exist, it would have to be estab
lished or our entire system would perish.
W e already have obtained a good idea o f the workings of this harmony
with respect to celestial mechanics; and we also are beginning to find
out more and more about it in relation to the realms of physics, chemistry,
and even geology. O nly with great difficulty will our knowledge go much
beyond that. If we seek more concrete knowledge, we shall have to keep
close to our terrestrial sphere. W e know that our earth was bom in time,
and we assume that, after an unknown number of centuries have passed,
it will have to perishjust as everything else that is bom exists for some
time and then perishes, or rather undergoes a series of transformations.1
H ow did our terrestrial sphere, which at first was incandescent, gaseous
mattercool off and take definite shape? W hat was the nature o f the pro
digious series o f geologic evolutions which it had to traverse before it could
produce upon its surface this immeasurable wealth o f organic life, begin
ning with the first ceil and ending with man? H ow did it keep on being
transformed and still continue its development in the historic and social
world of man? W here are we heading, impelled b y the supreme and
inevitable law o f incessant transformations which in human society are
called progress?
These are the only questions open to us, the only questions that can and
should be seized upon, studied, and solved by man. Forming, as we already
have said, only an imperceptible speck in the limitless and undefinable ques
tion of the universe, they present to our minds a world that is infinite in
the real and not in the divinethat is, the abstractmeaning of the word. It
is infinite not in the sense of a supreme being created by religious abstrac-
* The relative character of natural laws is treated by Bakunin in a somewhat different
form in Federalism, Socialism, and Anti~Tbeologism, Russian volume HI, pp. 161-164.
 59 77)? W orld Outlook
tdon; on the contrary, it is infinite in the tremendous wealth of its details,
which no observation, no science, can ever hope to exhaust.20
Man Should Know the Laws Governing the World. [But] if man does
not intend to renounce his humanity, he has to know, he has to penetrate
with his mind the whole visible world, and, without entertaining the hope
o f ever comprehending its essence, plunge into an ever deeper study of its
laws: for our humanity is acquired only at such a price. Man must gain
knowledge of all the lower realms, of those which preceded him and those
contemporaneous with his own existence; of all the mechanical, physical,
chemical, geologic, vegetable, and animal evolutions (that is, of all the
causes and conditions o f his own birth and existence), so that he may be
able to understand his own nature and mission upon this earthhis home
and his only scene of actionand so that in this world of blind fatality he
may inaugurate the reign of liberty.21
Abstraction and Analysis Are the Means Whereby the Universe is Com
prehended. And in order to comprehend this world, this infinite world,
abstraction alone is not sufficient. It would again lead us infallibly to God, to
non-being. It is necessary, while applying our faculty of abstraction, with
out which we would never be able to rise from a simple to a more complex
order of thingsand, consequently, never comprehend the natural hierarchy
of beingsit is necessary, we say, that our intelligence plunge with love and
respect into a painstaking study o f details and of the infinitesimal minutiae
without which we could not conceive the living reality of beings.
O nly by uniting those two faculties, those tw o apparently contradic
tory tendenciesabstraction and attentive, scrupulous, and patient analysis
of detailscan we rise to a true conception of our world (not merely ex
ternally but internally infinite) and form a somewhat adequate idea o f
our universe, of our terrestrial sphere, or, if you please, o f our solar sys
tem. It then becomes evident that, while our sensations and our imagina
tion are capable o f giving us an image, a representation of our world
necessarily false to a greater or lesser degree, it is science alone which can
give us a clear and precise idea of it.22
Man's T ask 1$ Inexhaustible. Such is the task of man: it is inex
haustible, it is infinite, and quite sufficient to satisfy the heart and spirit of
the most ambitious men. A transient and imperceptible being lost in the
midst of a shoreless ocean of universal mutability, having an unknown
eternity behind him and an eternity just as unknown ahead o f him, the
thinking, active man, the man who is conscious o f his human mission,
remains proud and calm in the awareness o f his liberty which he won by
freeing himself through work and science and b y liberating, through
revolt when necessary, the men around himhis equals and brothers. This
is his consolation, his reward, his only paradise.
R eal Unity is Negation of God. If you ask him after that what is
his intimate thought and his last word about the real unity of the universe,
 6o T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
he will tell you that it is constituted by the eternal transformation, a
movement which is infinitely detailed and diversified, which is self-reg
ulated and has no beginning, limit, nor end. And this is the absolute reverse
o f any doctrine of Providenceit is the negation of God.23

c h a p t e r 2 Idealism arid Materialism

Development of the Material World. The gradual development of

the material world, as well as o f organic animal life and of the historically
progressive intelligence of manboth individual and socialis perfectly
conceivable. It is a wholly natural movement from the simple to the com
plex, from the lower to the higher, from the inferior to the superior, a
movement in conformity with our daily experience and accordingly also
with our natural logic, with the very laws o f our mind, which, being
formed and developed only with the aid o f this same experience, is nothing
else but its reproduction in the mind and brain, its meditated pattern.
T h e System of the Idealists. The system o f the idealists is quite the
opposite o f this. It is the complete reversal of all human experience and o f
that universal and general common sense which is the necessary condition
of all understanding between man and man, and which, in rising from the
simple and unanimously recognized truth that two times two is four to
the sublimest and most complicated scientific speculationsadmitting,
moreover, nothing that has not been strictly confirmed b y experience or
b y observation of facts and phenomenabecomes the only serious basis of
human knowledge.1
T h e Course of the Metaphysicians. The course followed by the gen
tlemen of the metaphysical school is wholly different. And by metaphy
sicians we mean not only the followers of Hegels doctrine, o f whom few
are now left, but also the positivists, and all the present votaries of the
goddess of science; likewise all those who, proceeding b y various means,
even if by the means o f the most painstaking, although necessarily imper
fect study o f the past and present, have set up for themselves an ideal of
social organization into which they want to force at any cost, as into a
Procrustean bed, the life o f future generations; and all those, in a word,
who do not regard thought and science as necessary manifestations of
natural and social life, but narrow down this poor life of ours to such an
extent that all they can see in it is only the practical manifestation o f their
own thought and of their own rather imperfect science.2
The Method of Idealism. Instead of pursuing the natural order from
 6s Idealism and Materialism
the lower to the higher, from the inferior to the superior, and from the
relatively simple to the more complex; instead o f tracing wisely and ration
ally the progressive and real movement from the world called inorganic to
the organic world, to the vegetable, and then the animal kingdom, and
finally to the distinctively human world; instead of tracing the movement
from chemical matter or activity to living matter or activity, and from
living activity to the thinking beingthe idealists, obessed, blinded, and
pushed on by the divine phantom which they inherited from th eolo gy-
take precisely the opposite course.
T h ey begin with God, presented either as a person or as a divine sub
stance or idea, and the first step that they take is a terrible fall from the
sublime heights o f the eternal ideal into the mire o f the material world;
from absolute perfection into absolute imperfection; from thought to
being, or rather from Supreme Being to mere nothingness.
Idealism and the Mystery of Divinity. When, how, or w hy the
Divine Being, eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect, (and who probably became
weary of himself), decided upon this desperate somersault is something
that no idealist, no theologian, no metaphysician, no poet, has ever been
able to explain to the layman or to understand himself. A ll religions, past
and present, and all the systems of transcendental philosophy revolve
around this unique and iniquitous mystery.3
H oly men, divinely inspired law-givers, prophets, and Messiahs have
sought life in it and found only torment and death. Like the ancient Sphinx,
it devoured them, because they could not explain it. Great philosophers,
from Heraclitus and Plato down to Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant,
Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, not to mention the Indian philosophers, have
written heaps o f volumes and built systems both ingenious and sublime, in
which they said in passing many grand and beautiful things, and discovered
immortal truths, yet they left this mystery, the principal object of their
transcendental researches, just as unfathomable as before.
And if the gigantic efforts of the most wonderful geniuses the world
has ever known, and who through at least thirty centuries have each under
taken anew this labor of Sisyphus, have resulted only in rendering the
mystery still more incomprehensibleBow can we hope that it will be
unveiled for us b y the uninspired speculations o f some pedantic disciple
of an artificially warmed-over metaphysics?and this at a time when all
vital and serious minds have turned away from that ambiguous science
which came as a result of a compromisewhich doubtless can be explained
by historybetween the unreason of faith and sound scientific reason.4
It is evident that this dreadful mystery cannot be explained, which
means that it is absurd, for only the absurd admits of no explanation. It is
evident that whoever finds it essential to his life and happiness must
renounce his reason and return, if he can, to naive, blind, and crude faith,
to repeat with TertulBan and all sincere believers the words which sum
 62 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
up the very quintessence of theology: Credo quia absurdum. (I believe
because it is absurd.) Then all discussion ceases, and nothing remains but
the triumphant stupidity of faith.5
T h e Contradictions o f Idealism. The idealists are not strong on logic,
and one might say that they despise it. This is what distinguishes them
from the metaphysicians o f the pantheistic and deistic school, and imparts
to their ideas the character of practical idealism, drawing its inspiration
much less from the rigorous development of thought than from the
experience,! might almost say from the emotions, historical and collec
tive as well as individualof life. This imparts to their propaganda an
appearance of wealth and vital power, but an appearance only; for life
itself becomes sterile when paralyzed by a logical contradiction*
This contradiction consists in the following: T h ey want God, and they
want humanity. T h ey persist in linking up two terms which, once sepa
rated, cannot be conjoined without destroying each other. They say in
one breath: God and the liberty of man, or God and the dignity,
justice, equality, fraternity, and welfare o f men, without paying heed
to the fatal logic b y virtue of which, if God exists, all these things are
condemned to non-existence. For if G od is, he is necessarily the eternal,
supreme, and absolute Master, and if such a Master exists, man is a slave.
N ow if man is a slave, neither justice, nor equality, nor fraternity, nor
prosperity is possible for him.
T hey (the idealists) may, in defiance of sound sense and all historical
experience, represent their God as being animated b y the tenderest love for
human liberty, but a master, whatever he may do, and no matter how
much of a liberal he may want to appear, will nevertheless always remain
a master, and his existence will necessarily entail the slavery of all those
who are beneath him. Therefore, if God existed, he could render service
to human liberty in one way onlyby ceasing to exist.
A zealous lover o f human freedom, deeming it the necessary condition
of all that I admire and respect in humanity, I reverse Voltaires aphorism
and say: If God really existed, it 'would be necessary to abolish him.'1

T h e Contemporary Defenders of Idealism. W ith the exception of the

great but misled hearts and minds, to which I have already referred, who
are now the most obdurate defenders of idealism? In the first place, ail the
reigning houses and their courtiers. In France, it was Napoleon III and his
wife, Madame Eugenie; it is still all their former ministers, courtiers, and
marshals, from Rouher and Bazaine down to Fleury and Pietri; the men
and women of this imperial world who have done such a good job in
idealizing and saving France; journalists and savantsthe Cassagnacs, the
Girardins, the Duvemois, the Veuillots, the Leverriers, the Dumas; the
black phalanx of Jesuits and Jesuitesses in whatever garb they may appear
in; the entire nobility as well as the upper and middle bourgeoisie of France;
 63 Idealism and Materialism
the doctrinaire liberals and liberals devoid o f doctrines: the Guizots, the
Thierses, the Jules Favres, the Pelletans, and the Jules Simons-all hardened
defenders of bourgeois exploitation. In Prussia, in Germanyit is William
1, the current representative of the Lord G od on earth; all his generals, his
officersPomeranian and others; his entire army, which, strong in its
religious faith, has just conquered France in the idea! w ay that w e have
come to know so well. In Russia it is the Tsar and his Court; the Muravievs
and the Bergs, all the butchers and pious converters of Poland.
Idealism Is the Banner of Brutal Fora:. Everywhere, in short, relig
ious or philosophical idealism, (the one being simply the more or less free
interpretation o f the other, serves today as the banner of bloody and
brutal material force, of shameless material exploitation.
Materialism Is the Banner of Economic Equality and Social Justice.
O n the contrary, the banner of theoretical materialism, the red banner of
economic equality and social justice, is unfurled by the practical idealism
of the oppressed and famished masses who strive to bring about the
greatest liberty and realize the human right of each individual in the
fraternity o f all men on earth.8
T h e True Idealists and Materialists. W ho are the true idealiststhe
idealists not o f abstraction, but o f life, not of heaven, but of earthand
who are the materialists?
It is evident that the essential condition o f theoretical or divine idealism
is the sacrifice o f logic, of human reason and the renunciation o f science.
On the other hand, we see that in defending the doctrines of idealism, one
finds himself drawn into the camp of the oppressors and exploiters o f the
masses. These are the two great reasons which, it would seem, should be
sufficient to alienate from idealism every great mind and every great heart.
H ow does it happen that our illustrious contemporary idealists, who
certainly lack neither mind, nor heart, nor good will, and who have placed
their lives at the service o f humanityhow does it happen that they have
persisted in remaining among the representatives of a doctrine henceforth
condemned and dishonored?
T h ey must have been impelled by very strong motives. These cannot
be logic nor science, for logic and science have pronounced their verdict
against the idealistic doctrine. And it stands to reason that personal interests
cannot be counted among their motives, because these people are infinitely
above self-interest. Then it must have been a powerful motive of a moral
order. Which? There could be but one: These celebrated people think,
no doubt, that idealistic theories or beliefs are essential to the dignity and
moral grandeur of man, and that materialistic theories reduce him to the
level of the beast9
But what if the opposite were true?
Every development implies the negation of its point of departure. And
since the point of departure, according to the doctrine of the materialistic
 64 TH E P O L IT IC A L PH ILO SO PH Y OF B A K U N IN

school, is material, the negation must necessarily be ideal. Starting from

the totality of the real world, or what is abstractly called matter, material
ism logically arrives at the true idealization, that is, at the humanization, at
the full and complete emancipation, o f society. On the other hand, and
for the same reason, the starting point of the idealistic school is ideal and
it necessarily arrives at the materialization o f society, at the organization
of brutal despotism and a vile, iniquitous exploitation in the forms of the
Church and the State. The historic development of man according to the
materialistic school is a progressive ascension, while in the idealistic system
it can be nothing but a continuous fall.10
Points of Divergence Between Materialism and Idealism. Whatever
question pertaining to man w e may happen to touch upon, w e always run
into the same basic contradiction between those two schools. Thus material
ism starts from animality in order to establish humanity; idealism starts
from divinity in order to establish slavery and doom the masses to perpetual
animality.
Materialism denies free will and ends in the establishment of liberty.
Idealism, in the name of human dignity, proclaims free will and founds
authority on the ruins o f every liberty. Materialism rejects the principle o f
authority, rightly viewing it as the corollary of animality, and believing,
on the contrary, that the triumph o f humanity, which materialism regards
as the main object and significance of history, can be realized only through
liberty. In a word, when approached on any question, you will always find
the idealist in the very act of practical materialism, while on the other
hand, you will invariably see the materialist pursuing and realizing the
most ideal aspirations and thoughts.11
Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.
O nly Socialism and positive science show due respect to Nature and the
freedom of men.12
Marxism and Its Fallacies. The doctrinaire school of Socialists, or
rather of State Communists of Germany . . . quite a respectable school, a
circumstance which, however, does not prevent it from lapsing into errors
from time to time. One of its main fallacies is that it took as the basis
of its theories a principle which is profoundly true when viewed in its
proper lightthat is, from a relative point of viewbut which becomes
utterly false when observed in isolation from other conditions and held up
as the only ground and primary source of all other principles (as is done
by that school.)
This principle, constituting moreover the essential foundation of
positive Socialism, was first given its scientific formulation and developed
b y M. Karl Marx, the chief leader of the German Communists. It is the
dominant idea of the famous Communist Manifesto.19
Marxism and Idealism. This principle is in absolute contradiction to
the principle recognized b y the idealists of all schools. W hile the idealists
 6$ idealism and Materialism
deduce all the facts of history-including the development of material
interests and the various stages o f economic organization of societyfrom
the development of ideas, the German Communists, on the contrary, see
in ail human history, in the most ideal manifestations of collective as well
as individual human life, in every intellectual, moral, religious, metaphys
ical, scientific, artistic, political, juridical, and social development taking
place in the past and in the present, only the reflection or the inevitable
result of the development of economic phenomena.
While the idealists maintain that ideas produce and dominate facts, the
Communists, in full agreement with scientific materialism, maintain on the
contrary that facts beget ideas and that ideas are always only the ideal
reflection o f events; that out o f the sum total of phenomena, the economic
material phenomena constitute the essential basis, the main foundation,
while all the othersthe intellectual and moral, political, and social phenom
enafollow as a necessary derivative from the former.14
W ho Are Rightthe Idealists or the Materialists? W h o are right: the
idealists or the materialists? W hen the question is stated in this w ay hesita
tion becomes impossible. Undoubtedly the idealists are wrong and the
materialists are right. Yes, facts come before ideas; yes, the ideal, as
Proudhon said, is but the flower, the roots of which fie in the material
conditions of existence. Yes, the whole history of humanity, intellectual
and moral, political and social, is but the reflection of its economic history.
A ll branches of modern science, of a conscientious and serious science
concur in proclaiming this great, basic, and decisive truth: yes, the social
world, the purely human world, in short, humanityis nothing but the
last and supreme developmentat least in so far as our own planet goes
the highest manifestation of animality. But as every development neces
sarily implies the negation of its base or point of departure, humanity is at
the same rime the cumulative negation o f the animal principle in man. And
it is precisely this negation, as rational as it is natural, and rational precisely
because it is naturalat once historical and logical, as inevitable as the
development and realization of all the natural laws in the w orld-that
constitutes and creates the ideal, the world of intellectual and moral con
victions, the world of ideas.16
T he First Dogma of Materialism. [Mazzini] contends that we mate
rialists are atheists. W e have nothing to say to this, for we are indeed
atheists, and we take pride in it, in so far as pride can be permitted to
wretched individuals who like waves rise up for a moment and then vanish
in the vast collective ocean of human society. W e are proud of it, because
atheism and materialism are the truth, or rather the actual basis of truth,
and also because, above everything else, above practical consequences, we
desire the truth and only the truth. And besides, we believe that despite
appearances, despite the cowardly promptings of a policy o f caution and
skepticism, only the the truth will bring practical well-being to the people.
66 TH E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
Such is the first dogma o f our faith. But it looks ahead, toward the
future, and not backward.
The Second Dogma of Materialism. You are not content, however,
with pointing out our atheism and materialism. You infer from it that we
cannot have love for people nor respect for their virtues; that the great
things which have caused the most noble hearts to throbfreedom,
justice, humanity, beauty, truthmust be altogether alien to us, and that,
aimlessly dragging out our wretched existencecrawling rather than
walking erect upon earthwe know of no other cares than to gratify our
coarse and sensual appetites.10
And we tell you, venerable but unjust master [Mazzini], that this is
a grievous error on your part. D o you want to know to what extent we
love those great and beautiful things, the knowledge and love whereof you
deny to us? Let it be known to you that our love for them is so strong
that we are heartily sick and tired of seeing them everlastingly suspended
in your Heavenwhich ravished them from earthas symbols and never-
realized promises. W e are not content any more with the fiction of those
beautiful things: we want them in reality.
And here is the second dogma of our faith, illustrious master. W e
believe in the possibility, in the necessity, of such realization upon the
earth; at the same time we are convinced that all those things which you
worship as heavenly hopes will necessarily lose their mystic and divine
character when they become human and earthly realities.
T h e Matter of Idealism. You thought you had disposed of us com
pletely by calling us materialists. You thought that you had thereby con
demned and crushed us. But do you know where this error of yours
comes from? W hat you and we call matter are two totally different
things, two totally different concepts. Your matter is a fictitious entity,
like your God, like your Satan, like your infinite soul. Your matter is
infinite grossness, inert brutality, it is an entity just as impossible as the
pure, incorporeal, absolute spirit, both of whom exist only as figments of
the abstract fantasy of theologians and metaphysiciansthe only authors
and creators of those two fictions. The history of philosophy has revealed
to us the processa simple process indeedof the unconscious creation of
this fiction, the origin of this fatal historical illusion, which the long course
of many centuries has hung heavily, like a terrible nightmare, upon the
oppressed minds of human generations.
T h e Spirit and the Matter. The first thinkers were necessarily theo
logians and metaphysicians, the human mind being so constituted that it
must always start with a great deal of nonsense, with falsehood and errors,
in order to arrive at a small portion of the truth. A ll of which does not
altogether speak in favor of the holy traditions of the past. The first
thinkers, I say, took the sum of all the real beings known to them, them
selves included, of everything that, so it seemed to them, constituted force,
 67 Idealism and Materialism
movement, life, and intelligence, and called it spirit. AU the restthe form
less, lifeless mass which, as they saw it, was left after their own minds had
unconsciously abstracted it from the actual world, they named matter.
And then they wondered that this matter, which, like the same spirit,
existed only in their imagination, was so inactive, so stupid, in the presence
of their God, the pure spirit.17
T h e Matter of Materialists. W e frankly admit that we do not know
your God, but neither do we know your matter; or rather, we know that
one as well as the other does not exist, but that they were created a priori
by the speculative fantasy of naive thinkers of bygone ages. B y these words
matter and material we understand the totality, the hierarchy of real
entities, beginning with the most simple organic bodies and ending with
the structure and functioning of the brain of the greatest genius: the most
sublime feelings, the greatest thoughts, the most heroic acts, acts of self-
sacrifice, duties as well as rights, the voluntary renunciation of ones own
welfare, of ones egoismeverything up to the transcendental and mystic
aberrations of Mazzinias well as the manifestations of organic life,
chemical properties and actions, electricity, light, heat, the natural gravi
tation of bodies* A ll that constitutes, in our view, so many different but
at the same time closely interlinked evolutions of that totality of the real
world which we call matter.
Materialism is Not Pantheism. And note well, we do not regard this
totality as a sort of absolute and everlastingly creative substance, as the
Pantheists do, but as the perpetual result produced and reproduced anew
by the concurrence of an infinite series of actions and reactions, by the
incessant transformations of real beings who are bom and who die in the
midst o f this infinity.
Matter Includes the Ideal World. I will sum up: W e designate, by
the word material, everything taking place in the real world, within man
as well as outside of him, and we apply the word ideal exclusively to the
products of the cerebral activity of man; but since our brain is wholly
an organization of the material order, its function being therefore also
material like the action of all other thingsit follows that what we call
matter, or the material 'world, does not by any means exclude, but, on the
contrary, necessarily embraces the ideal world as well.18
Materialists and Idealists in Practice. Here is a fact deserving atten
tive thought on the part of our platonic adversaries! H ow does it happen
that the theoreticians of materialism usually show themselves in practice
as being greater idealists than the idealists themselves? This, however, is
quite logical and natural. For every development implies to some extent a
negation of the point of departure; the theoreticians o f materialism start
from the concept of matter and arrive at the idea, whereas the idealists,
taking for their starting point the pure, absolute idea, and constantly reit
erating the old myth of original sinwhich is only the symbolic expression
 68 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
of their own sad destiny-relapse, in theory and in practice, into the realm
of matter from which they seemingly find it impossible to disentangle
themselves. And what matter! Brutal, ignoble, stupid matter, created by
their own imagination as their alter ego, or as the reflection of their ideal
rdf .10
In the same way the materialists, always conforming their social
theories to the actual course of history, view the animal stage, cannibalism,
and slavery as the first starting points of the progressive movement of
society; but what are they aiming at, what do they want? They want the
emancipation, the full humanization of society; whereas the idealists, who
take for the basic premise of their speculations the immortal soul and
freedom of the will, inevitably end up in the cult of public order like Thiers,
in the cult of authority like Mazzini; that is, in the establishment and con
secration of perpetual slavery. Hence it follows that theoretic materialism
necessarily results in practical idealism, and that idealistic theories find their
realization only in a coarse practical materialism.
Only yesterday the proof thereof unfolded before our eyes. Where
were the materialists and atheists? In the Paris Commune. And where were
the idealists who believe in God? In the Versailles National Assembly.
W hat did the revolutionaries of Paris want? They wanted the final eman
cipation of humanity through the emancipation o f labor. And what does
the triumphant Versailles Assembly want now? The ultimate degradation
of humanity under the double yoke of spiritual and secular power.
The materialists, imbued with faith and with scorn for suffering, danger,
and death, want to forge ahead, for they see before them the triumph of
humanity. But the idealists, gasping for breath and seeing ahead of them
nothing but bloody specters, want at any cost to push humanity back into
the mire from which it extricated itself with such great difficulty*
Let anyone compare both and pass judgement.20

c h a p t e r 3 Science: G eneral Outlook

T h e Unity of Science. The world is a unity, notwithstanding the

infinite variety of its component beings. Mans reason, which takes this
world as an object to be recognized and comprehended, is the same or
identical, despite the infinite number of various human beingspast and
presentby whom it is represented. Science, therefore, also must be uni
fied, for it is but the recognition and comprehension of the world by
human reason.1
 69 Science: General Outlook
T h e Object of Science. Science has for its sole object the thought-
out and, as far as possible, systematic reproduction of the laws inherent in
the material as well as the intellectual and moral life of both the physical
and social worlds, which in reality are part o f the same natural world.8
These laws divide and subdivide into generaland into particular and
special laws.8
T h e Method of Science. In order to ascertain those general, partic
ular, and special laws, man has no other means but attentive and exact
observation of facts and phenomena which occur outside as well as within
him. And in the course of this observation he distinguishes the accidental,
contingent, and mutable from what occurs always and everywhere in the
same invariable manner.4
W hat is the scientific method? It is the realistic method par excellence.
It proceeds from the particular to the general, from studying and ascertain
ing facts to understanding them, and thence to ideas. Its ideas are but the
faithful representation of the co-ordination, succession, and mutual action
or causality which exist between real facts and phenomena. Its logic is
nothing more than the logic of facts.6 \
The scientific or the positivist method does not recognize any synthesis
which has not been preliminarily verified by experience and a scrupulous
analysis o f facts.6
Experiment and Criticism. Man has no other means of firmly con
vincing himself o f the reality of a given thing, fact, or phenomenon, than
actually to find, recognize, and establish them in their fullness without any
admixture of fantasy, conjectures, and irrelevancy brought in b y the
human mind. Thus experience becomes the foundation of science. And it
is not the experience of the individual that we have in mind. . . . Science,
therefore, has as its basis the collective experience not only of contempora
ries, but likewise o f all past generations. It does not admit any evidence
without preliminary criticism.7
Wherein d o this criticism consist? It consists in comparing things
affirmed b y science with the conclusions of my own personal experience.
And wherein does the experience of every individual consist? In the evi
dence of his senses governed by his reason, . . . I do not accept anything
which I have not found in the material state, which I have not seen, heard,
or where possible, touched with my own fingers. For me personally this
is the only means of becoming convinced of the reality of an object. And
I trust the evidence only of that person who unconditionally proceeds in
the same manner.
Hence it follows that science is first of all based upon the co-ordination
of a mass o f personal experiencespast and contemporaryalways subjected
, 3 the rigorous test o f reciprocal criticism. It is impossible to imagine any
more democratic basis than this. It is the essential primary foundation, and
all human knowledge which in the last analysis has not been tested by
 70 TH E P O L IT IC A L P H ILO SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

such criticism, must be totally excluded as lacking any certitude or scien

tific value.
Science and Belief. There is nothing so unpleasant for science as
belief. Criticism never says the last word. For criticism-representing the
great principles of rebellion within scienceis the one severe and incor
ruptible guardian of truth.
T h e Inadequacy of Experience and Criticism. Science, however,
cannot confine itself to this basis, which does no more than provide it with
a multitude o f the most diverse facts o f Nature duly established b y count
less individual observations and experiences. Science properly begins with
the comprehension of things, facts, and phenomena.10
T h e Properties of Science. The general idea is always an abstraction
and therefore it is in some degree a negation of real life. I have said that
human thought, and consequently science itself, can grasp and name in
real facts only their general meaning, their general relations, their general
laws; in short, thought and science can grasp that which is permanent in
the continued transmutations of things, but never their material and indi
vidual aspect, palpitating, so to speak, with life and reality, but for that
very reason transient and elusive.
T h e Limits of Science. Science comprehends the thought of reality,
but not reality itself; the thought of life, but not life itself. That is its
limit, its only insuperable limit, since it is grounded in the very nature o f
human thought, which is the only organ of science.11
T h e Mission of Science. It is in this nature of thought that the indis
putable rights and the great mission of science are grounded, as well as its
impotence in respect to life and even its pernicious action whenever it
arrogates to itself, through its official representatives, the right to govern
life. The mission of science consists in the following: B y establishing the
general relations of transitory and real things, by discerning general laws
inherent in the development of the phenomena of the physical and social
worlds, it fixesso to speakthe unchangeable landmarks of the progressive
march of humanity by indicating the general conditions, the rigorous
observation of which is a matter o f prime necessity, and the ignoring or
forgetting o f which leads to fatal results.
Science and Life. In a word, science is the compass o f life, but it is
not life itself. Science is immutable, impersonal, general, abstract, insensible,
like the laws of which it is but an ideal, thought-out or mental,-that is,
cerebral-*-reproduction. The word cerebral is used here as a reminder that
science itself is only a material product of a human material organthe
brain.
Life is fleering and transitory, but it also palpitates with reality and
individuality, with sensibility, sufferings, joys, aspirations, needs, and pas
sions. It alone spontaneously creates real things and beings. Science creates
nothing; it only recognizes and establishes the creations of Ufe. And every
 71 Science: General O utlook
rime scientific men, emerging from their abstract world, interfere with the
work of vital creation in the real world, all they propose or produce is
poor, ridiculously abstract, bloodless and lifeless, still-born, like Homun
culus, created by Wagner, the pedant disciple of the immortal Dr. Faust.
It follows that the only mission of science is to enlighten life and not to
govern it.12
Rational Science. By rational science we understand a science which
has rid itself of all the phantoms o f metaphysics and religion, but which
differs at the same time from purely experimental and critical sciences. It
differs from the latter, first in not confining its investigations to a definite
object but in trying to encompass the whole worldin so far as that world
is known, for rational science is not concerned with the unknown. Second,
rational science, unlike experimental science, does not confine itself to the
analytical method, but has recourse to the method of synthesis as well,
and often proceeds by analogy and deduction, although it attaches only a
hypothetical significance to syntheses, except where they have been
thoroughly confirmed b y the most rigorous experimental or critical
analysis.
T h e Hypotheses of Rational Science and Metaphysics. The hypoth
eses of rational science differ from those of'metaphysics in that the latter,
deducing its hypotheses as logical corollaries from an absolute system,
pretends to force Nature to accept themwhereas the hypotheses of
rational science follow not from a transcendental system, but from a syn
thesis which is in itself only the resum or the general inference from a
variety of facts, the validity o f which has been proven by experience.
That is w h y those hypotheses can never have an imperative and obligatory
character, being presented, on the contrary, in such a manner as to make
them subject to withdrawal as soon as they are refuted b y new experi
ences.13
Theological and Metaphysical Survivals in Science. Since in the
historic development of the human intellect, science comes always after
theology and metaphysics, man arrives at this scientific stage already
prepared and greatly corrupted b y a certain kind of abstract thinking. H e
carries over many abstract ideas worked out by theology as well as b y
metaphysics, ideas which on the one hand were the object of blind faith, and
on the other the object of transcendental speculations and more or less
ingenious play of words, explanations, and proofs o f a kind that do not
prove nor explain anythingbecause they are beyond the sphere of con
crete experiment, and because metaphysics has no other guarantee o f the
very objects about which it reasons than the affirmations or categorical
dictates of theology.14
From Theology and Metaphysics Toward Science. Man, at first the
ologian and metaphysician, and then tired of both theology and metaphys
icsbecause o f their theoretical barrenness and their baneful results in
 72 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
practicecarries over, as a matter of course, all those ideas into science. Yet
he introduces them not as fixed principles to be used as points of departure
but as questions to be solved by science. He came to science because he
began to doubt these ideas. And he doubts them because his long experi
ence with theology and metaphysics, which fathered them, showed Him
that neither of the two gave hitn any certainty about the reality o f their
creations. And what he doubts and rejects in the first place is not so much
those creations, those ideas, as the methods, means, and ways b y which
theology and metaphysics created them.
He rejects the system o f revelations and the theologians' faith in the
absurd because it is absurd; and he no longer wishes to be imposed on by
the despotism o f priests nor b y the butchers of the Inquisition. And above
all, he rejects metaphysics because it took over, either without criticism or
with illusory and much too complacent and mild criticism, the creations,
the basic ideas of theology: the idea of the Universe, of God, and of a soul
or spirit separated from matter. It was upon those ideas that it built its
system, and inasmuch as it took the absurd for its starting point, it inevi
tably ends up with the absurd. Thus emerging from theology and meta
physics, man first of all seeks a truly scientific method which above all
gives him complete certitude about the reality of the things on which he
reasons.18
T h e Great Unity of Science is Concrete. Vast as the world itself, it
[science] exceeds the capacities of the individual man, even though he
may be the most intelligent of all humans. N o one is capable of encompass
ing science in all its universality, and in all its infinite details. He who
clings to the general and neglects the particular lapses therewith into
metaphysics and theologyfor the scientific generalization differs from the
generalization in theology and metaphysics in that the former is built not
upon an abstraction from all particulars, as is the case with metaphysics
and theology, but, on the contrary, solely by relating the particulars into
an ordered 'whole.
The great unity of science is concrete. It is unity in infinite diversity,
whereas the unity of theology and metaphysics is abstract; it is a unity in
the void. In order to grasp scientific unity in all its infinite reality, one
would have to be able to understand all the beings whose natural, direct,
and indirect inter-relations constitute the universe. And manifestly this
task exceeds the capacities of any one man, one generation, or of humanity
as a whole.16
T h e Advantage of Positive Science. The immense advantage of posi
tive science over theology, metaphysics, politics, and juridical right
consists in thisthat instead o f the false and baneful abstractions, upheld by
those doctrines, it sets up true abstractions which express the general
nature and logic o f things, their general relations, and general laws of
development. This is what separates it [positive science] from all preced-
73 Science: General O utlook
ing doctrines and what will always assure it an important and significant
place in human society.17
Rational or Positive Philosophy. Rational philosophy or universal
science does not proceed aristocratically or authoritatively as the defunct
metaphysics does. The latter, always organized from the top downward,
by deduction and synthesis, also pretended to recognize the autonomy and
freedom of particular sciences, but in actuality it greatly cramped them,
by imposing upon them laws and even facts which often could not be
found in Nature, and preventing them from applying themselves to experi
mental researches, the results of which might have reduced to naught all
the speculations o f metaphysics.
Metaphysics, as you can see, acted according to the method of cen
tralized states. Rational philosophy, on the contrary, is a purely democratic
science. It is organized freely, from the bottom upward, and it regards
experience as its only basis. It cannot accept anything 'which has not been
analyzed, or confirmed by experience or by the most severe criticism.
Consequently God, Infinity, The Absolute, all those subjects so much
beloved b y metaphysics, are entirely absent from rational science. Indif
ferently it turns away from them, regarding them as phantoms or mirages.
But phantoms and mirages play an essential part in the development of
the human mind, and man usually has arrived at the comprehension of
simple truths only after conceiving and then exhausting all sorts of illusions.
And since the development of the human mind is a real subject matter for
science, natural philosophy assigns to these illusions their true places. It
concerns itself with them only from the point of view of history and at
the same time it tries to show us the physiological as well as the historic
causes accounting for the birth, development, and decay of religious and
metaphysical ideas, and also their relative and transitory necessity for the
development of the human mind. Thus it renders them all the justice to
which they are entitled and then turns away from them forever.
Co-ordination of Sciences. Its subject is the real and known world.
In the eyes of the rational philosopher, there is only one existence and one
science in the world. That is w hy he aims to unify and co-ordinate all the
particular sciences. This co-ordination of all the positive sciences into one
single system of human knowledge constitutes the positive philosophy or
the universal science. The heir and at the same time the absolute negation
of religion and metaphysics, this philosophy, which had been anticipated
and prepared a long time ago by the noblest minds, was first conceived as
a complete system b y the great French thinker, Auguste Comte, who
boldly and skilfully traced its original outline.18
The co-ordination of sciences established by positive philosophy is not
just simple juxtaposition; it is a sort of organic concatenation which begins
with the most abstract sciencemathematics, which has for its subject
matter facts of the simplest order, and gradually ascends toward compara-
74 TH E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

tively more concrete sciences which have for their subject matter facts ever
growing in their complexity. And thus from pure mathematics one passes
to mechanics, to astronomy, and then to physics, chemistry, geology, and
biology, including here the classification, comparative anatomy, and phy
siology of plants, and then of animals, and finally reaches sociology, which
embraces all human history, such as the development of the collective and
individual human existence in political, economic, social, religious, artistic,
and scientific life.
There is no break of continuity in this transition from one to the
other followed by all sciences, beginning with mathematics and ending
with sociology. One single existence, one single knowledge, and always
the same basic method, but which necessarily becomes more and more
complicated in the measure that the facts presented to it grow in com
plexity. Every science forming a link in this successive series rests largely
upon the preceding science and, in so far as the present state o f our real
knowledge permits it, it presents itself as the necessary development of the
antecedent science.19
T h e Order of Sciences in the Classifications of Comte and Hegel. It
is curious to note that the order of sciences established b y Auguste Comte
is almost the same as the one in the Encyclopedia {of Sciences] by Hegel,
the greatest metaphysician of past or present times, whose glory was that
he brought the development of speculative philosophy to its culminating
point, from which, impelled by its own peculiar dialectics, it had to follow
the downward path of self-destruction. But between Auguste Comte and
Hegel there was an enormous difference. The latter, true metaphysician
that he was, spiritualized matter and Nature, deducing them from logic;
that is, from spirit. Auguste Comte, on the contrary, materialized the
spirit, grounding it solely in matter. And therein lies his greatest glory.
Psychology. Thus psychology, a science which is so important, which
constituted the very basis of metaphysics, and which was regarded by
speculative philosophy as practically absolute, spontaneous, and independ
ent from any material influencethis science is based in the system of
Auguste Comte solely upon physiology and is but the continued develop
ment of the latter. Thus what we call intelligence, imagination, memory,
feeling, sensation, and will are nothing else in our eyes but the sundry
faculties, functions, and activities o f the human body.20
T h e Starting Point of Positive Science in Its Study of the Human
World. Considered from the moral point of view, Socialism is the self
esteem of man replacing the divine cult; envisaged from the scientific, prac
tical point of view, it is the proclamation of a great principle which per
meated the consciousness of the people and became the starting point for
the investigations and development of positive science as well as for the
revolutionary movement of the proletariat
This principle, summed up in all its simplicity, runs as follows: Just as
75 Science: General O utlook
in the so-called material world, inorganic matter (mechanical, physical,
chemical) is the determining base of organic matter (vegetable, animal,
cerebral, and mental), so in the social worldwhich can be regarded as the
last known stage o f development of the material worldthe development of
economic problems hit always been the determining base of religious, philo
sophical, and social development. 21
Considered from this point of view, the human world, its development
and history, will one day appear to us in a new and much broader light,
more natural and humane, and pregnant with lessons for the future. Whereas
formerly the human world was envisaged as the manifestation of a theo
logical, metaphysical, and juridico-political ideanow we must renew the
study o f it by taking Nature as the starting point and the peculiar physi
ology of man as the guiding thread.22
Sociology and Its Tasks. In this way one can already foresee the
emergence of a new science: Sociology, that is, the science of general laws
governing all the developments o f human society. This science will be the
last stage and the crowning glory of positive philosophy. History and sta
tistics prove to us that the social body, like any other natural body, obeys
in its evolutions and transformations general laws which appear to be just
as necessary as the laws of the physical world. T hetask o f sociology should
be to clear those laws from the mass of past events and present facts. Aside
from the immense interest which it already presents to the mind, it holds
out a promise o f great practical value for the future. For just as it is pos
sible for us to dominate Nature and transform it in accordance with our
progressive needs, owing to our acquired knowledge of Natures laws, so
shall w e be able to realize freedom and prosperity in the social environ
ment only when we take into account the natural and permanent laws
which govern that environment.
Once we recognize that the gulf which in the imagination of theolo
gians and metaphysicians was supposed to separate spirit from Nature ac
tually does not exist at allthen w e will have to regard the social body as
we would any other body, more complex than the others but just as
natural and obeying the same laws, in addition to those which apply to it
exclusively. Once this is admitted, it will become clear that knowledge of
and rigorous observance o f those laws are indispensable in order to make
practicable the social transformations we shall undertake.
But, on the other hand, we know that Sociology is a science which has
only recently emerged, and that it is still seeking out its elementary prin
ciples. If we judge this sciencethe most difficult of all sciencesby the
example of others, we shall have to admit that centuries will be neededor
at least one centuryin order that it may constitute itself in definite form
and become a serious and more or less adequate and self-sufficient science.23
History N ot Yet a Real Science. History, for example, does not yet
exist as a real science, and for the present we are only beginning to catch
 76 TH E P O L IT IC A L PH ILO SO PH Y OF B A K U N IN
glimpses of the infinitely complex tasks of this science. But let us suppose
that history as a science had already constituted itself in its final shape.
W hat could it give us? It would reproduce a faithful and rational picture
of the natural development of the general conditionsmaterial and spirit
ual, economic, political, and social, religious, philosophical, aesthetic, and
scientificof societies which have had a history.
But this universal picture o f human civilization, however detailed it
might be, would never present anything more than a general and conse
quently abstract evaluationin the sense that the billions of individuals
who make up the living and suffering materials of this history, at once
triumphant and dismal (triumphant from the point of view of its general
results and dismal from the point o f view of the gigantic hecatomb of
human victims crushed beneath its chariot wheels )that those billions of
obscure individuals without whom none of the great abstract results o f his
tory would have been attained (and who, it should be well borne in mind,
have never benefited from any of these results) will not find even the
slightest place in history. T hey lived and were sacrificed, crushed for the
good of abstract humanity, that is all.
T h e Mission and Limits of Social Science. Should the science of his
tory be blamed for it? That would be ludicrous and unjust. Individuals are
too elusive to be grasped b y thought, by reflection, or even b y human
speech, which is capable of expressing only abstractions; they are elusive
in the present as well as in the past. Therefore social science itself, the
science of the future, will necessarily continue to ignore them. A ll that we
have a right to demand of it is that it shall faithfully and definitely point out
the general cattses of individual suffering. Among those causes it will, of
course, not forget the immolation and subordination (alas, still too com
mon even in our time) o f living individuals to abstract generalizationsand
at the same time it will have to show us the general conditions necessary to
the real emancipation of the individuals living in society. That is its mission
and those are its limits, beyond which its activity can be only baneful and
impotent. For beyond those limits begin the pretentious doctrinaire and
governmental claims of its licensed representatives, its priests. It is time to
do away with all popes and priests: w e want them no longer, not even if
they call themselves Social Democrats.
I repeat once more: the sole mission of science is to light the way. O nly
life itself, freed from ail governmental and doctrinaire fetters and given the
full liberty o f spontaneous action, is capable of creation,2*
 77 Science and Authority

c h a p t e r 4 Science and A uthority

Science and Government. A scientific body entrusted with the gov

ernment o f society would soon end b y devoting itself not to science but to
quite another interest. And that, as is the case with all established powers,
would consist in its endeavor to perpetuate itself in power and consolidate
its position b y rendering the society placed in its care even more stupid
and consequently ever more in need of being governed and directed by
such a body.1
Hence it follows that the only mission of science is to illumine life but
not to govern i t
Government b y science and men of science, even if they style them
selves positivists, the disciples o f Auguste Comte, or even the disciples of
the doctrinaire school o f German Communism, cannot fail to be impotent,
ridiculous, inhuman, cruel, oppressive, exploiting, and pernicious.*
W hat I preach then is, up to a certain point, the revolt of life-against
science, or rather against government by $ciencey not against the destruc
tion o f sciencefor that would be a high crime against humanitybut the
putting of science in its rightful place so that it would never forsake it
again.8
T h e Authoritarian Tendencies of the Scientists. Though w e can be
almost certain that no scientist would dare to treat a man today as he treats
rabbits, nevertheless there remains the fear that scientists as a body, if per
mitted to do so, might submit living men to scientific experiments, doubt
less less cruel but none the less disastrous to their human victims. If scien
tists cannot perform experiments upon the bodies of individuals, they are
eager to perform such experiments upon the collective body, and it is in
this that they must be unconditionally stopped.
T h e Savants as a Caste. In their present organization the monopolists
of science, who as such remain outside of social life, undoubtedly form a
separate caste which has much in common with the caste of priests. Scien
tific abstraction is their God, living and real individuals their victims, and
they themselves the licensed and consecrated priests.
Science, in Contradistinction to Art, is Abstract. Science cannot go
outside o f the realm of abstractions. In this respect it is vastly inferior to
art, which, properly speaking, has to do with general types and general
situations, but which, by the use of its own peculiar methods, embodies
them in forms which, though not living forms in the sense of real life, none
the less arouse in our imagination the feeling and recollection of life. In a
certain sense it individualizes types and situations which it has conceived;
and by means of those individualities without flesh and boneand conse-
 78 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

quently permanent and immortalwhich it has the power to create, it

recalls to our minds living, real individuals who appear and disappear before
our eyes. A rt therefore is, as it were, the bringing back of abstraction to
life. Science, on the contrary, is the perpetual immolation of fugitive and
passing, but real life on the altar o f eternal abstractions.4
Science and the Real Man. History, however, is not made by abstract
individuals, but by real, living, and passing individuals. Abstractions do not
move b y themselves; they advance only when borne b y real people. But
for these beings who are composed not of mere ideas but o f desh-and-blood
realityscience has no heart. It considers them at most as material for in
tellectual and social development. W hat does it care for the particular
conditions and the ephemeral fate of Peter or James?5
Since by its very nature science has to ignore both the existence and the
fate of the individualo f the Peters and Jamesesit must never be per
mitted, nor must anyone be permitted in its name, to govern Peter and
James. For science in that case would be capable of treating them much the
same as it treats rabbits. O r perhaps it would continue to ignore them. But
its licensed representativesmen who are far from being abstract but on
the contrary quite active men with real interests, yielding to the pernicious
influence which privilege inevitably exercises upon menwould finally end
up by fleecing those individuals in the name of science, just as they have
hitherto been fleeced by priests, politicians o f all shades, and lawyers, all
of whom did it in the name o f God, or of the State, or o f Juridical Right.
T h e Inevitable Results of a Government by Savants. But until the
masses have reached a certain level of education, will they not have to let
themselves be governed by men o f science? God forbid! It would be better
for those masses to dispense with science altogether than to allow them
selves to be governed by men o f science. The first effect o f the existence of
such a government would be to render science inaccessible to the people.
For such a government necessarily would be aristocratic, because existing
scientific institutions are aristocratic by their essential nature.
A n aristocracy o f intellect and learning! From a practical point of view,
this would be the most implacable and from the social point of view the
most arrogant and offensive aristocracy. And such would be the power
established in the name of science. Such a regime would be capable of para
lyzing all life and movement in society. The scientists, ever presumptuous,
conceited and impotent, would want to meddle with everything, and as a
result the sources o f life would d ry up under their abstract and learned
breath.7
Picture to yourself a learned academy composed of the most illustrious
representatives o f science. Suppose that this academy were charged with
the task of legislating and organizing society, and that, inspired b y the
purest love of truth, it dictates to society only laws which are in absolute
harmony with the latest discoveries of science. I maintain that such legisla-
 79 Science and Authority
tion and such organization would be a monstrosity, and this for tw o reasons:
First, because human science is always and necessarily imperfect, and
when we compare what it has discovered with what remains to be discov
ered we can say that it is still in its cradle. That is true to such an extent
that were we to force the practical life of mencollective as well as in
dividualinto rigorous and exclusive conformity with the latest data of
science, we would thus condemn society as well as individuals to suffer
martyrdom on a Procrustean bed, which would soon dislocate and stifle
them, since life is always an infinitely greater thing than science.
The second reason is this: A society obeying legislation emanating from
a scientific academy, not because it understood the rationale o f this legis
lationin which event the very existence of this academy would become
uselessbut because the legislation, emanating from the academy, was im
posed in the name of a science venerated without being understoodsuch
a society would be a society not o f men but o f brutes. It would be a second
edition of the wretched Paraguayan Republic which submitted so long to
the rule of the Society of Jesus. Such a society would sink rapidly to the
lowest stage of idiocy.
And there is a third reason which makes such a government impossible.
It is that a scientific academy, invested, so to speak, with absolute sovereign
power, were it composed even of the most illustrious men, would inevitably
and quickly end b y becoming morally and intellectually corrupted. Such
has been the history of the academies even with the limited privileges they
have enjoyed up to the present.8
Government by Savants Ends in Repulsive Despotism. The metaphy
sicians or positivists, all those knights o f science and thought, in the name
of which they consider themselves entitled to dictate laws to life, all of
them are reactionariesconsciously or unconsciously so. And it is quite easy
to prove it.
Apart from metaphysics in general, which, even at the rime of its most
flourishing condition, was studied b y only a few people, science, taken in
its wider connotation, the more serious science, deserving such a name to
any extent, is within the reach o f only a small minority. For instance, in
Russia, with its eighty million population, how many serious scientists are
there? Yes, there are thousands who hold forth on science, but people who
have a real knowledge of it can be counted only in hundreds.
But if science is to dictate its laws to life, the vast majoritymillions of
menwill have to be governed b y only a few hundred savants. And this
number would have to be reduced still further, for it is not every science
that renders one capable of governing society; and sociology, the science of
sciences, presupposes on the part of the fortunate scientists a serious knowl
edge of all other scientists.
H ow many such scientists have we got not just in Russia but throughout
Europe? And so all these twenty or thirty savants are to rule the whole
 8o TH E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

world! Can one conceive a more absurd and repugnant despotism? The
chances are that those thirty scientists would fall out among themselves,
but if they did work together it would be only to the woe o f humanity.
. . . T o be the slaves o f pedantswhat a fate for humanity!
G ive them [the scientists] this full freedom [to dispose of the lives o f
others] and they will submit society to the same experiments which they
now perform, for the benefit of science, upon rabbits, cats, and dogs.
Let us honor the scientists on their proper merits, but let us not accord
them any social privileges lest w e thereby wreck their minds and morals.
Let us not recognize on their part any other rights but the general right
freely to advocate their convictions, thoughts, and knowledge. Neither to
them nor to any one else should be given power to govern, for b y the
operation o f the immutable law o f Socialism, those invested with such
power necessarily become oppressors and exploiters of society.*
Science and the Organization of Society. H ow could this contradic
tion be solved? On the one hand, science is indispensable to the rational
organization of society; on the other hand, being incapable of interesting
itself with that which is real and living, it must not interfere with the real
or practical organization of society. This contradiction can be solved in
only one way: Science, as a moral entity existing outside of the universal
social Ufe and represented by a corporation of licensed savants, should be
liquidated and widely diffused among the masses. Called upon to represent
henceforth the collective consciousness of society, science must in a real
sense become everybodys property. In this way, without losing thereby
anything of its universal character, of which it can never divest itself with
out ceasing to be science, and while continuing to concern itself with gen
eral causes, general conditions, and general relations of things and individu
als, it will merge in fact with the immediate and real life of all individuals.
That will be a movement analagous to that which made the Protestants
at the beginning of the Reformation say that there was no further need o f
priests, for henceforth every man would be his own priest, each man, thanks
to the invisible and direct intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ, at last
being able to devour the body of God.
But here the question is not of Jesus Christ, nor of the body of God, nor
of political liberty, nor o f juridical rightall of which come as metaphysical
revelations and, as is known, are all alike indigestible. And the world of
scientific abstractions is not a revealed world; it is inherent in the real
world, of which it is only the general or abstract expression and representa
tion.
So long as it forms a separate domain, specially represented by a cor
poration of savants, this ideal world threatens to take the place of the
Eucharist in relation to the real world, reserving for its licensed representa
tives the duties and functions of priests. That is w hy it is necessary, by
means of general education, equally available for all, to dissolve the segre
 81 Science and Authority
gated social organization o f science, in order that the masses, ceasing to be
a mere herd, led and shorn b y privileged shepherds, may take into their
own hands their historic destinies,10

c h a p t e r j Modern Science
Deals in Falsities

T h e Seats of Modem Science, A t present the science and scientists o f

European schools and universities are in a state o f systematic and premedi
tated falsification. One might think that these schools were established
especially to poison bourgeois youth intellectually and morally. For the
schools and universities have become marts of privilege where falsehood is
sold both at wholesale and retail.
W e are not going to point to theology, the science o f divine falsehood;
to jurisprudence, the science o f human falsehood; to metaphysics, or ideal
istic philosophywhich are sciences of all kinds of half-lies. But we shajl
point here to such sciences as history, philosophy, politics, and economic
science, which are falsified b y being deprived of their true basis, natural
science, and are based to an equal extent on theology, metaphysics, and
jurisprudence. One can say without fear o f exaggeration that any young
man who is graduated from these universities and is imbued with those
sciences, or rather with systematized lies and half-lies which arrogated
to themselves the name of science, is lost unless special circumstances arise
which may save him from that fat.
The professorsthose modem priests o f licensed political and social
quackerypoison the university youth so effectively that it would need a
miracle to cure them. B y the time a young man is graduated from the uni
versity, he has already become a full-fledged doctrinaire, full of self-conceit
and contempt for the rabble, whom he is quite ready to oppress, and espe
cially to exploit, in the name o f his intellectual and moral superiority. The
younger such a person is, the more pernicious and reprehensible he becomes.
T h e Revolutionizing Character of Natural Sciences. It is altogether
different with the faculty of exact and natural sciences. Those are genuinely
scientific. T hey are foreign to theology and metaphysics and are inimical
to all fictions, being exclusively based upon exact knowledge, upon con
scientious analysis of facts, and upon pure reasoning, that is to say upon
the individuals common sense, broadened b y the well co-ordinated experi-
 82 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
ence o f all. A s much as the idealistic sciences are aristocratic and authori
tarian, so are the natural sciences democratic and extensively liberal. And
therefore what do we see in practice? Young men who have studied the
idealistic sciences eagerly enter the party of exploiters and reactionary doc
trinaires, while those who have studied natural sciences join, with equal
eagerness, the party of the Revolution, and many of them are frankly revo
lutionary Socialists.1
Education and Science Are Now the Privilege of the Bourgeoisie.
In all the European States it is only the bourgeoisie, an exploiting and
dominating classincluding the nobility, which today exists only in name
that receives a more or less serious education. Apart from that, a special
minority is produced from the midst of the bourgeoisie, one which devotes
itself exclusively to the study of the greater problems o f philosophy, social
science, and politics. It is this minority that, properly speaking, constitutes
the newest aristocracy o f the licensed and privileged intellectuals. It is
the quintessence and the scientific expression o f the spirit and interests of
the bourgeoisie.
Science and Its Progress at the Service of the Bourgeoisie. The modem
universities of Europe, which form a sort of scientific republic, render in
the present day the same services to the bourgeoisie which at one time the
Catholic church rendered to the nobility; and just as Catholicism once
sanctioned the violence perpetrated b y the nobility upon the people, so
does the university, this church of bourgeois science, explain and legitimize
the exploitation of the same people b y bourgeois capital. Is it any wonder
that in the great struggle of Socialism against bourgeois political economy,
the official science of today has decisively taken and continues to take the
side of the bourgeoisie?2
Most of all we blame science and the arts for extending their benefits
and exercising their influence only over a very small section of society, to
the exclusion and therefore to the detriment of the great majority. In this
connection one can now say about progress in science and art the same that
has already been said with so much reason about the amazing development
o f industry, commerce, and creditin a word, o f the social wealth in the
most civilized countries o f the modem world.3
Technical Progress Under Capitalism Paralleled by Growth of Poverty
Among the Masses. The progress is stupendousthat is true. But the more
it grows, the more does it become the cause of intellectual and consequently
of material slavery, the cause of poverty and mental backwardness o f the
people; for it constantly deepens the gulf separating the intellectual level
o f the privileged classes from that o f the great masses o f the people.4
T h e Proletariat Must T ake Possession of Science. Let us not lay the
blame on consequences, but turn instead to root-causes. The science o f the
schools is the product of the bourgeois spirit; and the representatives of this
science were bom, grew up, and were educated in a bourgeois environ-
 Modern Science Deals in Falsities
meet, under the influence of the spirit and exclusive interests o f the latter.
Therefore it stands to reason that this science, as well as its representatives,
should be inimical to the real and full emancipation of the proletariat, and
that their economic, philosophical, political, and social theories, consist
ently worked out in the same spirit, should have for their aim only to prove
the incapacity of the working masses and accordingly the mission of the
bourgeoisie to govern them to the end of time, since wealth gives it knowl
edge and knowledge in turn affords it the opportunity to grow still richer.
H ow can the workers break this vicious circle? T h ey must, of course,
acquire knowledge and take possession of sciencethis mighty weapon
without which, it is true, they can make revolutions, but lacking which
they will never be able to erect upon the ruins of bourgeois privileges the
equality of rights, justice, and liberty which constitute the true basis of all
their political and social aspirations.5

c h a p t e r 6 M an: Anim al
and Hum an Nature

T h e Unity of Man and Nature. Man forms together with Nature a

single entity and hi the material product o f an indefinite number o f exclu
sively material causes.1
Monism and Dualism: the Universal Consciousness of Humanity. T o
people who think logically and whose minds function on the level of mod
em science, this unity of the Universe or of Being has become a well estab
lished fact. One must recognize, however, that this fact, which is so simple
and self-evident that anything opposed to it appears to us as being absurd,
finds itself in flagrant contradiction to the universal consciousness o f hu
manity. The latter, manifesting itself in the course o f history in widely
diverse forms, always unanimously recognized the existence o f two distinct
worlds: the spiritual and the material world, the divine and the real world.
Beginning with the crass fetichists who worshiped in the world surrounding
them the action of a supernatural power embodied in some material object,
all the peoples believed and still believe in the existence of some kind of
a divinity.
T h e Irrefutability of Dualism. This imposing unanimity, in the opin
ion o f many people, carries more weight than the proofs of science; and if
the logic o f a small number of consistent but isolated thinkers contradicts
 84 TH E P O L IT IC A L PH ILO SO PH Y OF B A K U N IN

this universal assent, the worse so these people declare for that logic.
. . . Thus the antiquity and universality o f belief in God have become, con
trary to all science and all logic, irrefutable proofs of the existence of God.
But w h y should it be so? Until the age of Copernicus and Galileo, the
whole world, with the exception o f the Pythagoreans, believed that the
sun revolved around the earth. Did the universality of such a belief prove
the validity of its assumptions? And always and everywhere, beginning with
the origin of historic society down to our own period, a small conquering
minority has been, and still is, exploiting the forced labor o f the masses o f
workersslaves or wage-earners. Does it follow that the exploitation of the
labor of someone else b y parasites is not an iniquity, robbery, and theft?
Absurdity is OldT ru th is Young. Here are tw o examples which
show that the arguments of our Deists are utterly worthless. And indeed:
There is nothing more universal, more ancient, than absurdity; it is truth,
on the contrary, that is relatively much younger, always being the result,
the product of historic development, and never its starting point. For man,
b y origin, the cousin, if not the direct descendant, o f the gorilla, started
out from the dark night of animal instinct in order to arrive at the broad
daylight of reason. This fully accounts for his past absurdities and partly
consoles us for his present errors.
T h e Character o the Historic Development of Humanity. The entire
historic development of man is simply a process of progressive removal
from pure animality by way of creating his humanity. Hence it follows
that the antiquity of an idea, far from proving anything in favor o f it,
should on the contrary arouse our suspicions. As to the universality of a
fallacy, it proves only one thing: the identity of human nature at all times
and in every climate.2
The Origin of Man. Organic life, having begun with the simplest
hardly organized cell, and having led it through the whole range of trans
formationfrom the organization of plant life to that o f animal lifehas
finally made a man out of it.3
Our first ancestors, our Adams and Eves, were, if not gorillas, very near
relatives o f theirs; omnivorous, intelligent, and ferocious beasts, endowed
in a higher degree than the animals o f any other species with two precious
faculties: the thinking faculty and the urge to rebel.
Thought and Rebellion. These two faculties, combining their pro
gressive action throughout the history of mankind, represent in themselves
the negative moment,* aspect, or power in the positive development of
human animality, and consequently create all which constitutes humanity
in man.4
Idealists of all schools, aristocrats, and bourgeois, theologians and meta
physicians, politicians and moralists, clergymen, philosophers, and poets
T he term moment is used here as a synonym for the term factor, as in the expres
sion, the psychological moment. James Guillaume.
 85 Man: Anim al and Human Nature
not forgetting the liberal economists, zealous worshipers of the ideal, as
we knoware greatly offended when told that man, with all his magnificent
intelligence, his sublime ideas, and his boundless aspirations, islike all else
existing in the worldnothing but matter, only a product o f vile matter.5
Man, like everything else in Nature, is an entirely material being. The
mind, the thinking faculty, the power to receive and reflect different ex
ternal and internal sensations, to bring them back to memory after they
have passed away and to reproduce them b y the power o f imagination, to
compare and distinguish them from one another, to abstract common deter
minations and thus to create general or abstract concepts, and finally the
ability to form ideas b y grouping and combining concepts in accordance
with various methodsin a word, intelligence, the sole creator of our whole
ideal worldis a property of the animal body and especially of the alto
gether material mechanism o f the brain.0
T h e Material Source of the Moral and Intellectual Acts of Man.
W hat we call intelligence, imagination, memory, feeling, sensation, and
will, are to us but the various properties, functions, and activities o f the
human body.7
Science has established that all the intellectual and moral acts which
distinguish man from the other animal species, such as thought, the mani
festations of human intelligence and conscious will, have as their only source
the purely material, although doubtless highly perfect, organization of mjjn^
without the shadow of intervention b y any spiritual or extra-material
agency. In short, they are the products resulting from a combination o f
the diverse, purely physiological functions o f the brain.
This discovery is of immense importance from the point o f view of
science as well as that o f life. . . . There are no more gaps o f discontinuity
between the natural and the human worlds. But just as the organic world,
which, being the continuous and direct development of the non-organic
world, differs from the latter by the introduction of an active new ele
mentorganic matter (produced not b y the intervention o f some extra
material causebut by the combinations of the same non-organic matter,
hitherto unknown to us, and producing in turn, upon the basis and under
the conditions of the non-organic world, o f which it is the highest result,
all the richness of plant and animal life)in the same w ay the human
world, being the direct continuation o f the organic world, is essentially
distinguished from the latter by the new elementthought. And that new
element is produced by the purely physiological activity o f the brain and
produces at the same time within this material world and under both
organic and inorganic conditions, of which it is the final recapitulation, all
that we call the intellectual and moral, political and social, development of
manthe history of humanity.8
T h e Cardinal Points of M ans Existence. The cardinal points of the
most refined human existence, as well as of the most torpid animal exist-
 86 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

ence, will always remain the same: to be born, to develop and grow; to
work in order to eat and drink, in order to have shelter and defend oneself,
in order to maintain ones individual existence in the social equilibrium of
his own species; to love, reproduce and then to die. . . .
Nature Knows of N o Qualitative Differences. For man we have to
add to these points only one new element-thought and understandinga
faculty and a need which doubtless are already found in a lesser but quite
perceptible degree in those animal species which by their organization
stand nearest to man; for it seems that Nature knows of no absolute quali
tative differences, and that all such differences are in the last analysis
reduced to differences in quantity, which, however, only in man attain
such commanding and overwhelming power that they gradually transform
all his life.
W rong Conclusions from the Fact of the Animal Descent of Man.
As it has been well observed b y one of the greatest thinkers of our age,
Ludwig Feuerbach, man does everything the animals do, only he does it
in a more and more humane way. Therein lies all the difference, but it
is an enormous difference.9
In this connection it will not be am is to repeat the above to many of
the partisans o f modem naturalism or materialism, who, because man in
our days has discovered his full and complete kinship with all the other
animal species and his immediate and direct descent from the earthand
also because man has renounced the absurd and vain boastings of spiritual
ity which, under the pretext o f granting him absolute liberty, condemned
him in fact to perpetual slavery-imagine that this gives them the right to
shed all respect for man. Such people may be compared to lackeys, who,
having found out the plebeian origin of one eliciting respect by his natural
dignity, believe themselves entitled to treat him as their equal, for the
simple reason that they cannot conceive of any other dignity but the one
produced by aristocratic birth. Others are so happy over the discovery of
mans kinship with the gorilla that they would gladly retain him in the
animal state, and they refuse to understand that mans whole historic
mission, his dignity and liberty, consist in getting further and farther away
from that state.10
T h e Historic World. Yes, man does everything the animals do, only
he does it in a more and more humane way. Therein lies all the difference,
but it is an enormous difference. It embraces all civilization, with all the
marvels of industry, science, and the arts; with all the developments o f
humanityreligious, esthetic, philosophic, political, economic, and social-
in a word, the whole domain of history. Man creates this historic world
b y the exercise of an active power which is found in every living being,
which constitutes the essence of all organic life, and which tends to assimi
late and transform the external world in accordance with everyones needs.
The active force is of course instinctive and inevitable, and precedes any
87 Man: Anim al and Human Nature
thought, but when illumined b y mans reason and determined b y his con
scious will, it becomes transformed within man and for man into intelli
gent and free labor.11
Labor Is a Necessity. A ll animals must work in order to live. A ll of
them, according to their needs, their understanding, and their strength,
take part, without noticing or being aware o f it, in this slow work of
transforming the surface of the earth into a place more favorable to
animal life. But this work becomes properly human only when it begins
to satisfy, not merely the fixed and inevitably circumscribed needs o f
animal life, but also those of the thinking and speaking social being who
endeavors to win and realize his freedom to the full.12
Slavery in Nature. The accomplishment o f this immense, boundless
task is not only effected by mans intellectual and moral development, but
also b y the process o f material emancipation. Man becomes man in reality,
he conquers the possibility o f development and inner perfection provided
only that he breaks, to some extent at least, the slave-chains which Nature
fastened upon its children. Those chains are hunger, privation of all sorts,
physical pain, the influence o f climate and seasons, and in general, the thou
sands o f conditions of animal life which keep the human being in almost
absolute dependence upon his immediate environment; the constant dangers
which in the guise o f natural phenomena threaten him on all sides; the per
petual fear which lurks in the depths o f all animal existence and which
dominates the natural and savage individual to such an extent that he finds'
within himself no power of struggle or resistance; in other words, not a
single element of the most absolute slavery is lacking.18
Fear Compels Struggle. The perpetual fear which he feels, and which
underlies every animals existence, form also, as I shall be able to show later,
the first basis of every religion. It is this fear that makes it necessary for
the animal to struggle throughout its life against dangers threatening it from
the outside; and to maintain its own existenceindividual and socialat the
expense o f everything surrounding it. . . .
W ork Is the Highest Law of Life. Every animal works; it lives only
by working. Man as a living being, is not exempt from this necessity, which
is the supreme law o f life. He must work in order to maintain his existence,
in order to develop in the fulness of his being. There exists, however, an
enormous difference between the w ork of man and the work of animals of
all species. The work of animals is stagnant, because their intelligence is
stagnant; on the contrary, mans work is progressive, his intelligence being
highly progressive in character.
T h e Superiority of Man. Nothing proves better the decisive inferiority
of all animal species, compared to man, than the incontestable fact that the
methods and results of work, individual and collective, o f the many other
animal species,while frequently being so ingenious as to give the impres
sion o f being guided and effected by scientifically trained intelligence,do
 88 TH E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

not change and hardly improve at all. Ants, bees, beavers, and other ani
mals which live in societies do now precisely the same thing which they
were doing 3,000 years ago, showing that there is nothing progressive about
their intelligence. Today they are just as skilled and just as stupid as they
were thirty or forty centuries ago.
Progress in the Animal World. There is certainly a progression in the
animal world. But it is the species themselves, the families, and even the
classes, that undergo slow transformations, driven along by the struggle for
existencethe supreme law o f the animal world, by virtue of which intelli
gent and energetic organizations force out inferior species that show them
selves incapable of holding their own in the constant struggle. In this respect
--and only in this onethere is movement and progress in the animal world.
But within the species themselves, within the families and classes o f animals,
such movement and progress are absent or nearly absent.14
Character of M ans Work. Mans work, from the point of view o f
methods as well as o f results, is just as capable of progressive development
and improvement as his intelligence. Man builds his world b y combining
his neuro-cerebral energy with his muscular work, his scientifically trained
mind with physical power, and b y applying his progressive thought to
work, which, being at first exclusively animal, instinctive, blind, and almost
mechanical, becomes more and more rational as time goes on.
In order to visualize this vast ground which man has covered in the
course of his historic development, one must compare the huts of the sav
ages with the beautiful palaces o f Paris which the brutal Prussians thought
themselves destined b y Providence to destroy, and also compare the pitiful
armaments of primitive populations with the terrible machines of destruc
tion which came as the last word of German civilization.16

c h a p t e r 7 M an as Conqueror o f Nature

W hat all the other animal species, taken together, could not accomplish,
was done b y man. He actually transformed the greater part of the earth,
making it into a habitable place fit for human civilization. He overcame and
mastered Nature. He turned this enemy, the first terrible despot, into a
useful servant, or at least into an ally as powerful as it is faithful.
W hat Does It Mean to Conquer Nature? It is necessary, however, to
have some idea about the true meaning of the expression: To conquer Na~
ture or master Nature. . . , The action of Man upon Nature, like any other
action in the world, is inevitably determined b y the laws of Nature. It hi,
 89 Man as Conqueror o f Nature
without doubt, the direct continuation of the mechanical, physical, and
chemical action of all inorganic, complex, and elementary entities. It is the
most direct continuation of the action of plants upon their natural environ
ment and of the more and more developed and conscious action o f all ani
mal species. It is indeed nothing but animal action, governed b y progressive
intelligence and science, both of which are a new mode o f transformation
of matter in man; hence it follows that when man acts upon Nature, it is
in reality the case of Nature working upon itself. And one can see clearly
that no rebellion against Nature is possible.1
M an and the Laws of Nature. Therefore man will never be able to
combat Nature; he cannot conquer nor master it. W hen man undertakes and
commits act which seemingly militate against Nature, he once more obeys
the laws o f that very same nature. Nothing can free him from their domina
tion; he is their unconditional slave. But this indeed is no slavery at all, inas
much as every kind of slavery presupposes tw o beings existing side b y side
and one of them subject to the other. Man being a part of Nature and not
outside o f it therefore cannot be its slave.2
Y et still, in the heart of Nature, there exists a slavery from which man
must free himself if he does not want to renounce his humanity; this is the
natural world which envelops him and which is usually called external
Nature. It is the sum total o f things, phenomena, and living beings which
envelop and keep on tormenting man, without and outside of which he
could not exist for even one solitary moment, but which nevertheless seem
to be plotting against him so that every moment of his life he is forced to
fight for his existence. Man cannot escape from this external world, for it
is only in this world that he can live and draw his sustenance, but at the
same time he has to safeguard himself against it, for it always seems intent
upon devouring him,3
W hat then is the meaning of the expression: To combat, to master
Nature? Here we have an everlasting misunderstanding, which is due to the
two-fold meaning given to the term Nature. On the one hand Nature is
regarded as the universal totality of things and beings as well as of natural
laws; against Nature thus conceived, as I have already pointed out, no
struggle o f any kind is possible, for this kind o f Nature envelops and com
prises everything; it is the absolute, all-powerful being. On the other hand,
by Nature is understood the more or less limited totality o f phenomena,
things, and beings which envelop man; in short, his external world. Against
this external Nature, struggle is not only possible but inevitable, being
forced b y universal Nature upon everything that lives or exists.
For, as I have already pointed out, everything that exists and every liv
ing being carries within itself the two-fold law of Nature; r. N o existence
is possible outside of ones natural environment and its external world;
2. In that external world only that can maintain itself which exists and lives
at the expense of that world and is in constant struggle against it.
 90 TH E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OP B A K U N IN
T h e Necessity of Straggle Against External Nature. Man, endowed
with faculties and attributes which universal Nature bestowed upon him
can and should conquer and master this external world. He, on his part,
must subdue it and wrest from it his freedom and humanity.4
Long before the beginnings of civilization and history, during a far dis
tant period which may have lasted many thousands o f years, man was
nothing but a wild animal among many other wild animalsa gorilla, per
haps, or a close relation to it. A camiverous orwhich is more likelyan
omnivorous animal, he was no doubt more voracious, savage, and fierce than
his cousins of other species. Like the latter he worked and waged a de
structive struggle.
T h e Ideal State: W hat Brought Man out of the Brute Paradise?
This was the state of innocence, glorified b y ail kinds of religionsthe ideal
state so much extolled by Jean Jacques Rousseau. W hat forced him out o f
this animal paradise? It was his progressive intelligence, naturally, neces
sarily, and gradually applied to his animal work. . . . Mans intelligence
develops and progresses only through knowledge of real things and facts;
only through thoughtful observation and an ever more and more exact and
painstaking examination of the relations and the regular sequences of the
phenomena of Nature, and o f the various stages of their development,in
short, of their inherent laws.
Knowledge of Natural Lavra Furthers Human Aims. Once man ac
quires knowledge of these laws governing all beings, himself included, he
learns to foresee certain phenomena enabling him to forestall their effects or
to safeguard himself against their unwelcome and harmful consequences.
Besides, this knowledge o f the laws governing the development o f the
phenomena o f Nature applied to his muscular work, which at first is purely
instinctive and animal in its character, enables him in the long run to derive
benefit from those natural things and phenomena, the totality o f which con
stitutes the eternal world, the same world which was so hostile at first,
but which, owing to science, ends up by contributing powerfully toward
the realization o f mans aims.
Man Slow to Utilize Fire. Many centuries passed before man, who was
just as wild and dull-witted as the apes, learned the art, now so rudimentary,
trivial, and at the same time so valuable, of making fire and using it for his
own needs. . . . Those extremely simple arts, which today constitute the
domestic economy o f the least civilized peoples, involved immense inventive
efforts on the part of the earliest generations. That accounts for the des
perately slow tempo o f mans development during the pre-historic period,
compared with his rapid development in our days.
Knowledge Is the Weapon of Victory. It was in this manner that man
transformed and continues to transform his environment, external Nature,
that he conquers and masters it. Did this come as a result o f mans revolt
against the laws of universal Nature, which embraces all that exists and
9i Man as Conqueror o f Nature
which also constituted mans nature? On the contrary. It is through the
knowledge and the most attentive and exact observation o f this law, that
man succeeds not only in freeing himself from the yoke of external Nature,
but likewise in at least partly subduing it.
But man does not content himself alone with that. Just as the human
mind is capable of making an abstraction out o f its own body and person
ality, and treating it as an external object, so does man, who is constantly
driven on by an inner urge inherent in his being, apply the same procedure,
the same method, in order to modify, correct, and perfect his own nature.
This is a natural inner yoke which man must also learn to shake off.
A t first this yoke appears to him in the form of his own weakness, im
perfection, or personal infirmitiesbodily as well as intellectual and moral
infirmitiesand then it appears in the most general form of his brutality or
animality contrasted with his human nature, which progressively grows
within him as his social environment develops.
Battling Inner Slavery. Man has no other means of struggling against
this inner slavery except through the science of the natural laws governing
his individual and collective development and the application of that science
to his individual training (b y means of hygiene, physical exercise, exercis
ing of his affections, mind, and will, and likewise b y means of a rational
education), as well as to the gradual change of the social order.
Universal Nature Is Not Hostile to Man. Being the ultimate product
of Nature on this earth, man, through his individual and social development^
continues, so to speak, the work, creation, movement, and life of Nature.
His most intelligent and abstract thoughts and actions, which as such are
far removed from what is usually called Nature, are in reality only N a
tures new creations and manifestations. Mans relations to this universal
Nature cannot be external, cannot be those of slavery or of struggle; he
carries this Nature within himself and is nothing outside o f it. But in
studying its laws, in identifying himself in some measure with them, in
transforming them by a psychological process of his own brain into ideas
and human convictionshe frees himself from the triple yoke imposed upon
him, first b y external Nature, then by his inner individual nature, and
finally, b y society, of which he is a product.7
No Revolt Is Possible Against Universal Nature. It seems to me quite
evident from what has already been said that no revolt is possible on the
part of man against what I call universal causality or universal Nature; the
latter envelops and pervades man; it is within and outside of him, and it
constitutes his whole being. In revolting against this universal Nature, he
would revolt against himself. It is evident that man cannot even conceive
the slightest urge or need for such a revolt; since he does not exist apart from
Universal Nature, since he carries it within himself and since at every mo
ment of his life he finds himself wholly identical with it, he cannot consider
or feel himself a slave of this Nature.
 92 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
On the contrary, it is only by studying and b y making use, b y means o f
his thought, o f the external laws of this Nature-laws which manifest them
selves equally in everything constituting his external world as well as his
own individual development (bodily, intellectual, and moral)that he suc
ceeds in gradually shaking off the yoke of external Nature, of his own
natural imperfections, and as we shall see further on, the yoke of an authori
tarian social organization.
T h e Dichotomy of Spirit and Matter. But how then could there arise
in mans mind the historic thought of separation o f spirit and matter? H ow
could man ever conceive this impotent, ridiculous, but at the same time his
toric attempt to revolt against Nature? This thought and attempt occurred
simultaneously with the historic conception of the idea of God, of which
in effect they are the necessary corollary. Man at first understood b y the
word Nature only what we call external Nature, his own body included.
W hat we call universal Nature he called God ; hence the laws of Nature
appeared not as inherent laws but as manifestations of the Divine W ill, Gods
commandments imposed from above upon Nature as well as upon man. In
line with this, man, siding with God, whom he himself created in opposition
to Nature and his own being, declared himself in revolt against Nature, and
laid the foundation for his own political and social slavery.
Such has been the historic work of all the religious cults and dogmas.8

c h a p t e r 8 Mind and Vi^ill

Mans L ife Is the Continuation of Animal Life,* Intelligence Is a

Quantitative but Not a Qualitative Difference. The individual as well as
the social life of man was in the beginning nothing but the immediate con
tinuation o f animal lifecomplicated b y a new element: the faculty o f
thinking and speaking.
Man is not the only intelligent animal on earth. Far from it. Comparative
psychology proves that there is no animal which is altogether devoid o f
intelligence, and that the closer a species approaches man in its organization
and especially in the structure of its brain, the higher it stands in the devel
opment of its intelligence. But only in man does intelligence reach the high
stage o f development which can properly be called the thinking faculty;
that is, the power to compare, separate, and combine the representations o f
external and internal objects given to us by our senses; to form groups of
 93 M ind and W ill
such representations; and then again to compare and combine those groups,
which are not real entities nor representations of objects perceived b y our
senses, but only abstract notions formed and classified by the work of our
mind, and which, retained by our memoryanother faculty of our brain-
become the starting point or basis for those conclusions which we call ideas.
Only Man Is Endowed with the Power of Speech. A ll these functions
of our brain would be impossible if man were not endowed with another
faculty, complementing the thinking faculty and being inseparable from it:
the faculty to incorporate, so to speak, and to identify by external signs all
the operations of the mind, the material movements of the brain, up to their
most subtle, most complicated variations and modifications; in short, if man
were not endowed with the power of speech. A ll other animals have a lan
guagewho doubts that? But since their intelligence never rises above
materia! representations, or, what is moreabove the most elementary com
parison and combination of those representationstheir language, lacking
organization and incapable of development, can express only material sen
sations and notions but never ideas.1
From these ideas man deduces conclusions or necessary logical applica
tions. W e meet people, alas, quite often, who have not yet reached the full
possession o f this faculty, but w e never saw or heard any member of an
inferior species exercising this faculty, unless we are given the instance of
Balaams ass, or of other such animals recommended by various religions to-
our faith and esteem. Thus we can say, without fear of being refuted, that
of all the animals living upon this earth only man is able to think.
T h e Faculty of Abstraction. O nly man is endowed with this power of
abstraction, no doubt developed and fortified within the human species by
age-long exercise. B y inwardly and gradually elevating man above the ob
jects surrounding him, above all that which is called the external world, and
even above himself as an individual, this faculty enables man to conceive, to
create the idea o f the totality of existences, of the Universe, o f Infinity or
the Absolutean idea altogether abstract and, if you please, devoid of any
content, but nevertheless an all-powerful idea, and the instrumental cause of
all the subsequent conquests of man. For it is this idea only that forces him
out of the sham beatitudes and the stupid innocence of the animal paradise,
in order to lead him to the triumphs and the infinite torments of a bound
less development.
T h e Germ of Analysis and Scientific Experiments. Owing to this fac
ulty of abstraction, man, by rising above the immediate pressure exercised
by all external objects upon every individual, can compare one object with
the others and observe their relations. Here is the beginning o f analysis and
of experimental science. And owing to this same faculty, man undergoes a
process of inner bifurcation, rising above his own drives, instincts, and
urges, in so far as these are of a passing and particular nature. This enables
him to compare his inner drives just as he compares external objects and
 94 TH E PO L IT IC A L PH ILO SO PH Y OF B A K U N IN
movements, and to side with some against others in accordance with the
(social) ideal crystalizing within him. Here we already have the awaken
ing of conscience and of what we call will.*
T h e Human W orld Begins. W ith the first awakening of thought mani
fested in speech begins the exclusively human world, the world of abstrac
tions. Owing to this faculty of abstraction, as we already have said, man,
bom and produced o f Nature, creates for himself, in the midst of and under
the conditions o f this same Nature, a second existence which conforms with
and is progressive in the same w ay as his ideal.
T h e Dialectics of Human Development. Whatever lives, we add for
greater clarity, tends to realize itself in the fullness of its being. Man, at the
same time both a thinking and a living entity, must first o f all know himself
in order to attain full self-realization. This is the cause of the vast lag which
we observe in his development and by reason of which many hundreds of
centuries were necessary for man to arrive at the present state o f society in
the most civilized countriesa state that is still far behind the ideal toward
which we are heading. Man had to exhaust all the stupidities and all possible
adversities in order to be able to realize the modicum of reason and justice
which now prevails in the world.
The last phase and the supreme goal of all human development is liberty.
Jean Jacques Rousseau and his disciples were wrong in seeking this liberty
in the beginnings of history when man, still totally lacking any self-
knowledge and therefore quite incapable of working out any kind of con
tract, was suffering under the yoke of that inevitability o f natural life to
which all animals are subject.
Nature and Human Freedom. Man could free himself from this yoke,
in a certain sense, only by the gradual use of his reason, which, although
developing very slowly, discerned little by little the laws governing the ex
ternal world as well as those which are inherent in our own nature, and
appropriated them, so to say, by transforming them into ideasalmost spon
taneous creations o f our own brains. W hile continuing to obey those laws
man in reality simply obeyed his own thoughts.
In respect to Nature this is for man the only possible dignity and free
dom. There will never be any other freedom; for natural laws are immutable
and inevitable; they are the very basis of all existence, and constitute our
own being, so that no one can rebel against them without immediately arriv
ing at the absurd or without causing his own destruction. But in recognizing
and assimilating them with his own mind, man rises above the immediate
pressure of his external world, and then, becoming in turn a creator, hence
forth obeying only his own ideas, he more or less transforms the latter in
accordance with his progressive needs, impressing upon it to some extent
the image of his own humanity.
Universal Conation and the Elan Vitale. Thus what w e call the hu
man world has no other immediate creator but man himself, who produces
 95 M ind and W ill
it by overcoming step by step the externa! world and his own bestiality,
thus gaining for himself his liberty and human dignity. H e conquers them,
impelled b y a force which is independent of him, an irresistible force in
herent in all living beings. This force is the universal current of life, the
same one which we call universal causality, Nature, which manifests itself
in all living beings, plants or animals, in the urge of every individual to
realize for himself the conditions necessary for the life of its speciesthat
is, to satisfy his needs.
Free W ill. This urge, this essential and supreme manifestation o f life,
constitutes the basis o f what we call 'will. Inevitable and irresistible in all
the animals, the most civilized man included, instinctive (one might almost
say mechanical) in the lower organisms, more intelligent in the higher
species, it reaches full awareness only in man, who, owing to his intelli
gence (which raises him above instinctive drives and enables him to com
pare, criticize, and regulate his own needs), is the only one among all the
animals on earth possessing conscious self-determinationa free will.
Freedom of W ill Is Only Relative. It stands to reason that this free
dom of human will in the face of the universal life current or this absolute
causality, in which every will is, so to speak, only a streamlet, has no other
meaning but the one given to it b y reflection, inasmuch as it is opposed to
mechanical action or even instinct. Man apprehends and is clearly aware of
natural necessities which, being reflected in his brain, are reborn through
a little known physiological process as the logical succession of his "own
thoughts. This comprehension in the midst of his absolute and unbroken
dependence gives him the feeling o f self-determination, of conscious, spon
taneous will and liberty.
Natural Drives Are Sublimated but Not Suppressed by Man. Short of
suicidepartial or totalno man can free himself from his natural urges,
but he can regulate and modify them by striving more and more to make
them conform to what at different epochs of intellectual and moral develop
ment he calls the just and beautiful.3
Freedom of W ill Is Qualified but Not Unconditional. Since every man
at his birth and during the whole course o f his development throughout his
life, is nothing else but the result o f a countless number o f actions, circum
stances, and conditions, material and social, which continue shaping him as
long as he lives, where could hea small, transient, and hardly perceptible
link in the universal concatenation o f all past, present, and future beings
get the power to break by an act of will this eternal and all-powerful soli
darity, this absolute and universal entity which has real existence but which
no human imagination can ever hope to comprehend?
Let us recognize once for all that against this universal Nature, our
mother who shapes us, brings us up, feeds us, surrounds, and permeates us
to the marrow of our bones, to the deepest recesses o f our intellectual and
moral being, and which end by smothering us in her maternal embraces
 96 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF BAK tFN IN

that against this universal Nature there can be neither independence nor
revolt.
Rational Liberty: T he Only Possible Liberty. True, man, with the aid
o f knowledge and by the thoughtful application o f the laws o f Nature,
gradually emancipates himself, but not from the universal yoke which he
bears, together with all the living beings and the existing things that come
into and disappear in this world. Man only frees himself from the brutal
pressure exercised upon him by his own externa! world-material and social
which includes all the things and all the men surrounding him. H e rules
over things through science and work; as to the arbitrary yoke imposed by
men, he throws it off through revolution.
Such is the only rational meaning of the word liberty: that is, the rule
over external things, based upon the respectful observation of the laws of
Nature. It is independence from the pretensions and despotic acts of men;
it is science, work, political revolt, and, along with all that, it is finally the
well thought-out and free organization of the social environment in con
formity with the natural laws inherent in every human society. The first
and last condition of this liberty rests then in absolute submission to the
omnipotence of Nature, and the observation and the most rigid application
of its laws.4
Like Mind, W ill Is a Function of Matter. Like intelligence, will then
is not a mystic, immortal, and divine spark which was miraculously dropped
down from Heaven to earth to give life to pieces of flesh, to lifeless bodies.
It is the product of organized and living flesh, the product of the animal
organism. Mans organism is the most perfect of all organisms, and, conse
quently, mans will and intelligence are relatively the most perfect and
above all the most capable o f ever greater progress and perfection.
Neuiral and Muscular Power. W ill, like intelligence, is a neural fac
ulty of the animal organism and has the brain as its special organ. . . . Mus
cular or physical force and neural force, or the power of will and intelli
gence, have this in common: first, that every one of them depends upon the
organization of the animal which the latter received at birth and which in
consequence is the product of a multitude o f circumstances and causes not
only lying outside of this animal organization but preceding it; and second,
that all are capable of development with the aid of exercise and training,
which once more goes to prove that they are the product o f external
causes and actions.
It is clear that being in respect to their nature and their intensity simply
the effects o f causes that are altogether independent of them, these forces
themselves have only relative independence in the midst of that universal
causality which constitutes and embraces the worlds. What is muscular
force? It is a material force of certain intensity generated within the animal
by the concurrence of influences or antecedent causes and which at a given
moment enables the animal to oppose to the pressure o f external forces not
absolute but a somewhat relative resistance.
 97 M ind and W ill
W ill Is Determined by Structure of Organism. The same holds true
about the moral force which we call the power of will. A ll animal species
are endowed with this power in various degrees, and this difference is first
of all determined by the particular nature of their organism. Among all the
animals of this earth the human species is endowed with it to the highest
extent. But even within this very species not all individuals receive at their
birth an equal volitional disposition, the greater or lesser will-capacity being
determined beforehand by the relative health and normal development of
ones body, and above all by a more or Ik s fortunate brain structure. Here
then, at the very beginning, we have a difference for which man is in no
way responsible. Is it my fault that Nature endowed me with an inferior
will-capacity? The most rabid theologians and metaphysicians will not dare
say that what they call soulsthat is, the sum total of affective, intellectual,
and volitional faculties which everyone receives at birth-are all equal.
T h e Role of Exercise in the Training of the W ill. True, the volitional
faculty, as well as the other faculties of man, can be developed by education
and appropriate exercises. Those exercises accustom children gradually to
refrain from manifesting immediately every slight impression, and to con
trol more or less the reflex movements o f their muscles when stimulated b y
internal and external sensations transmitted by their nerves.
A t a later stage, when a certain degree of the power of reflection is
developed within the child b y an education suitable to his character, the
same exercise, becoming in turn more and more conscious in character and
calling to its aid the merging intelligence o f the child and basing itself to a
certain extent upon the violitional power developing within himtrains the
child to repress the immediate expression of its feelings and desires and to
subject all the voluntary movements of the body, as well as that which is
called its soul, its very thought, its words and acts, to a dominant aim,
whether good or bad.
Is Man Responsible for His Upbringing? Mans will, thus developed
and trained, is evidently nothing else but the product of influences lying
outside of him and, reacting upon the will, they determine and shape it in
dependently of his own resolves. Can a man be held responsible for the
upbringing, bad or good, adequate or inadequate, which he gets? . . .
U p to a certain point man can become his own educator, his own in
structor as well as creator. But it is to be seen that what he acquires is only
a relative independence and that in no way is he released from the inevitable
dependence, or the absolute solidarity by which he, as a living being, is
irrevocably chained to the natural and social world.5
 98 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

c h a p t e r 9 M an Subject
To Universal Inevitability

Animal or Human W ill Is Not the Creative Motive Power. It having

been proven that animal will, human will included, is an altogether formal
power, capable, as we shall see further, of modifying to a certain point,
through the knowledge of natural laws and by strictly submitting its actions
to those laws, the relations between man and the things surrounding him
as well as the relations between the things themselves (but not capable of
producing or creating the essence of animal life); it having been proven
that the altogether relative power of this will, once put up against the only
existing absolute power of universal causality would forthwith appear as
absolute impotence or as a relative cause of new relative effects determined
and produced by the very same causalityit becomes evident that it is not
in the animal will but in the universal and inevitable solidarity of things
and beings that we have to look for the mighty motive power which creates
the animal and human world.
Th e Universal Motive Power Is Blind and Unconscious. This motive
power we call neither intelligence nor will. For in fact it has not and cannot
have any self-consciousness, determination, or resolution of its own. It is
not the indivisible, substantial, and single being as represented b y the meta
physicians, but the product and, as I have said, a result eternally reproduced
by all the transformations of beings and things within the Universe. In a
word, it is not an idea but a universal fact, beyond which it is impossible to
conceive anything. And this fact is not at all an immutable being, but is,
on the contrary, perpetual movement, manifesting and forming itself by an
infinity o f relative action and reactionmechanical, physical, chemical, geo
logic, and those of the plant, animal, and human worlds. A s the resultant o f
that combination of relative and countless movements, this universal motive
power is all-powerful just as it is inevitable, blind, and unconscious.
It creates worlds and is at the same time their product. In every domain
o f earthly nature it manifests itself through laws or particular forms o f
development. In the inorganic world, in the geologic formation of our
sphere, it presents itself as the incessant action and reaction of mechanical,
physical, and chemical laws which seemingly can be reduced to one basic
law: the law of gravitation and movement, or rather of materia! attraction,
all other laws being only its various manifestations and transformations.
Those laws, as I have already observed, are general in the sense that they
 99 Man Subject to Universal Inevitability
encompass all phenomena produced upon the earth, governing the relations
and the development o f organic, vegetable, animal, and social life as well as
the inorganic totality of things.
T h e Law of Nutrition, Formulated by Auguste Comte. In the organic
world the same universal motive power manifests itself through a new law
based upon the sum total of the general laws, which doubtless is but a new
transformation, the secret of which has escaped us until now, but which
is a particular law in the sense that it manifests itself only in living beings:
plants, animals, and man. This is the law of nutrition, which, using the ex
pression of Auguste Comte, consists: i. In the inner absorption o f nutri
tive materials drawn from the ambient system and their gradual assimilation.
2. In the outward exhalation of molecules, which from that moment become
foreign to the organism and necessarily disintegrate in the accomplishment
o f nutrition. *
This law is pa. ricular in the sense that it is not applied to the inorganic
world, but it is general and fundamental for all living beings. The problem
o f nourishment, the great problem of social economy, is the real basis of
all the subsequent developments of humanity.
Sensibility and Irritability-The Specificae of the Animal World. In
the animal world itself the same universal motive power reproduces this
generic law of nutrition in a new and peculiar form, b y combining iifwith
two properties which distinguish animals from plants: the properties o f
sensibility and irritability. Those faculties are evidently material, and the
so-called ideal facultiesthe feeling called moral in order to differentiate it
from physical sensation, as well as the faculties of will and intelligenceare
but their higher expression or their ultimate transformation. Those two
propertiessensibility and irritabilityare found only among animals. Com
bined with the law of nutrition, which is common to animals as well as to
plants, those properties constitute the particular generic law of all the ani
mal world.1
T h e Genesis of Animal Habits. The various functions which we call
animal faculties are not optional in the sense that the animal may or may
not exercise them. A ll faculties are essential properties, necessities inherent
in the animal organization. The different species, families, and classes of
animals differ among themselves either by the total absence of some facul
ties or by the overdevelopment of some of those faculties at the expense of
the others.
Even within the animal species, families, and classes, individuals are not
equally successful. The perfect specimen is the one in which all the char
acteristic organs of the order to which the individual belongs are harmo
niously developed. The lack or the weakness o f one of those organs consti
tutes a defect, and when the organ is of an essential kind, it may lead to

* Auguste Comte, Cowry de Philosophic Positive. Tome HI; p. 464 (Bakunins footnote.)
 IOO TH E PO L IT IC A L PH ILO SO PH Y OF B A K U N IN
the individual becoming a monster. Monstrosity or perfection, excellence
or defect-all that is given to the individual by Nature and is received by
him at his birth.
But once a faculty exists, it bos to be exercised, and up to the time when
the animal has arrived at a stage of natural decline, it necessarily tends to
develop and strengthen this faculty b y repeated exercise, which creates habit
the basis of all animal development. And the more it is exercised and
develops, the more does it become an irresistible force within the animal, a
force to be obeyed implicitly.
T h e Animal Is Compelled to Exercise Its Faculties. It happens at
times that a malady or external circumstances more powerful than this
natural tendency of the individual, hinder the exercise and the development
of one or several faculties. In that case respective organs become atrophied
and the whole organism is stricken with suffering in the measure of the
importance of these faculties and their corresponding organs. The individ
ual may die from it, but in so far as he lives, in so far as he still has other
faculties left, he must exercise them under the pain of death. The individual
therefore is not the master of those faculties, but their involuntary agent,
their slave.
. . . Being a living organism, endowed with the two-fold property o f
sensibility and irritability, and as such capable o f experiencing pain as well
as pleasure, every animal, man included, is forced by its own nature to eat,
drink, and to move about. This it has to do in order to obtain nourishment,
as well as in response to the supreme need of its muscles. In order to main
tain tts existence, the organism must protect itself against anything menacing
its health, its nourishment, and all the conditions of its life. It must love,
mate, and procreate. It must reflect, in the measure of its intellectual ca
pacity, on the conditions for the preservation of its own existence. It must
want all these conditions for itself. And directed by a sort of prevision
based upon experience, of which no animal is totally devoid, it is forced to
work, in the measure of its intelligence and muscular force, in order to pro
vide for the more or less distant future.
Animal Drives Reach Stage of Self-Consciousness in Man. Inevitable
and irresistible in all animals, the most civilized man not excepted, this im
perious and fundamental tendency of life constitutes the very basis of ail
animal and human passions. It is instinctive, one might say mechanical, in
the lowest organizations, it is more conscious in the higher species, and it
reaches the stage of full self-consciousness only in man, the latter being
endowed with the precious faculty of combining, grouping, and fully ex
pressing his thoughts. Man is the only one capable of abstracting himself,
in his thought, from the external world and even from his own inner world,
and of rising to the universality of things and beings. Being able, from the
heights of this abstraction, to view himself as an object of^his own thought,
he can compare, criticize, order, and subordinate his own needs, without
 IOI Man Subject to Universal Inevitability
overstepping the vital conditions of his own existence. A ll that permits him,
within very narrow limits of course, and without being able to change any
thing in the universal and inevitable flow o f causes and effects, to deter
mine by abstract reflection his own acts, which gives him, in relation to
Nature, the false appearance of spontaneity and absolute independence.2
W hat Sort of Free W ill Does Man Possess? Does man really possess
free will? Yes and no, depending upon the construction put upon this ex
pression. If by free will is meant free arbitrary will, that is to say, the pre
sumed faculty o f the human individual to determine himself freely and
independently o f any external influence; if, as it is held b y all religious and
metaphysical systems, b y this pretended free will man is to be removed from
the principle o f universal causality which determines the existence o f every
thing and which renders everyone dependent upon all the otherswe can
do nothing else but reject such freedom as nonsense, since no one can exist
outside of this universal causality.8
Statistics as a Science Are Possible Only on the Basis of Social Deter
minism. Socialism, based upon positive science, rejects absolutely the doc
trine o f free will. It recognizes that all the so-called vices and virtues
o f men are only the product of the combined action of Nature and
society. Nature, b y the power o f ethnographic, physiological, and path
ological influences, produces the faculties and tendencies which are
called natural, while the social organization develops them, restrains them,
or warps their development. A ll men, with no exceptions, at every moment
of their lives are what Nature and society have made them.
O nly this natural and social necessity makes possible the rise of statistics
as a science. This science does not content itself with verifying and enu
merating social facts, but in addition it strives to explain the connection and
the correlation of those facts in the organization of society. Criminal sta
tistics, for instance, establish the fact that in one and the same country, in
one and the same city, during a period of ten, twenty, or thirty years, one
and the same crime or misdemeanor is repeated every year in almost the
same proportion; that is, provided no political or social crisis has changed
the attitude of society there. W hat is even more remarkable is that the
methods used in committing crimes also are repeated from year to year with
the same frequency. For instance, the number of poison murders and of
knifings or shootings as well as the number of suicides committed in a cer
tain w ay are almost always the same. This led Quetelet to make the follow
ing memorable statement: Society prepares the crimes while individuals
merely carry them out.
T h e Idea of Free W ill Leads to Its Corollary, the Idea of Providence.
This periodic repetition of the same facts would be impossible if the intel
lectual and moral proclivities o f men, as well as their acts, depended upon
their free will. The term free will either has no meaning at all or it
signifies that the individual makes spontaneous and self-determined deci
 102 T H E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
sions, wholly apart from any outside influence o f the natural or social order.
But if that were so, if men depended only upon themselves, the world would
be ruled b y chaos which would preclude any solidarity among people. Mil
lions of free wills, independent o f each other, would tend toward mutual
destruction, and no doubt they would succeed in achieving it were it not
for the despotic will o f 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.
T h e Practical Implications of the Idea of Divine Providence. That
is w h y all the protagonists o f the doctrine of free will are compelled b y
logic to recognize the existence and action o f divine Providence. This is the
basis of all theological and metaphysical doctrines. It is a magnificent sys
tem 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, unfor
tunately, 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, w e know that while Divine Right reigned upon the earth, the
great majority o f people were subjected to brutal, merciless exploitation,
and were tormented, oppressed, and slaughtered. W e know that up to now
the masses of people have been kept in thralldom in the name o f religious
and metaphysical divinity. And it could not be otherwise, for if the world
Nature as well as human societywere governed b y a divine will, there
could be no place in it for human freedom. Mans will is necessarily weak
and impotent before the will of God. Thus when w e try to defend the
metaphysical, abstract, or imaginary freedom of men, the free will, w e end
up by denying real freedom. Before God, the Omnipotent and Omnipres
ent, man is only a slave. And since mans freedom is destroyed b y divine
Providence, there remains only privilege, that is, special rights vouchsafed
b y Divine Grace to certain individuals, to a certain hierarchy, dynasty, or
class.4
Science Rejects Free W ill. That accumulated, co-ordinated, and assimi
lated experience which we call science proves that free will is an un
tenable fiction running counter to the nature o f things; what we call the
will is only the manifestation of a certain kind of neural activity, just as our
physical power is the result o f the activity of our muscles. Consequently,
both are equally the products of natural and social life, that is, of the phy
sical and social conditions amid which every man is bom and grows up.5
W ill and Intelligence Are Only Relatively Independent. Thus con
ceived and explained, mans will and intelligence can no longer be con
sidered an absolutely autonomous power, independent of the material world
and capable, in conceiving thoughts and spontaneous acts, of ^breaking the
inevitable chain o f causes and effects which constitutes the universal soli
darity o f the worlds. The apparent independence of will and intelligence is
 1 03 Man Subject to Universal Inevitability
largely relative, for like the muscular force o f man, these forces or nervous
capacities are engendered in every individual b y the concurrence o f cir
cumstances, influences, and external actionsmaterial and socialwhich are
absolutely independent o f his thought and his will. And just as we have had
to reject the possibility o f what the metaphysicians call spontaneous ideas,
we have to reject the spontaneous acts of the will, the arbitrary freedom
of will and the moral responsibility of man, in the theological, metaphysical,
and juridical senses of the word.9
Moral Responsibility with Man and Animals. N o one speaks o f the
free will o f animals. Everyone agrees that animals, at every instant o f their
lives and in every act o f theirs, are governed by causes that are independent
o f their thought and will. Everyone agrees that animals inevitably follow
the impulses received from the external world as well as from their inner
nature; in a word, that there is no possibility o f their ideas and spontaneous
acts of their will disrupting the universal flow of life, and that, consequently,
they can bear no responsibility, either juridical or moral. And yet all ani
mals are unquestionably endowed with will and intelligence. Between the
corresponding faculties o f animals and man there is only a quantitative dif
ference, a difference o f degree. Then w hy do w e declare man absolutely
responsible and the animal absolutely devoid of responsibility?
I believe that the error consists not in this idea o f responsibility, which
exists in a very real manner, not only in men but in animals also, although
in a different degree. It consists in the absolute sense which our human
vanity, backed up b y a theological or metaphysical aberration, imparts to
human responsibility. The whole error is contained in this word absolute.
Man is not absolutely responsible and animals are not absolutely irrespon
sible. The responsibility of the one as well as that o f the other is relative
to the degree of reflection o f which any one o f them is capable.
Responsibility Exists, but It Is Relative. W e can accept it as a gen
eral axiom that nothing exists or ever can be produced in the human world
which does not exist in the animal world, in the embryonic state at least,
humanity being simply the latest development o f animality upon earth. It
follows then that if there is no animal responsibility, there cannot be re
sponsibility on the part of man, the latter being subject to the absolute
impotence o f Nature as much as the most imperfect animal on earth; from
the absolute point of view animal and man are equally irresponsible.
But relative responsibility certainly exists in the animal world in various
degrees. Imperceptible in the lower species, it becomes quite pronounced in
animals endowed with a superior organization. Beasts bring up their prog
eny, and they develop in the latter, in their own manner, intelligence; that
is, the comprehension or knowledge of thingsand will; that is, the faculty,
the inner force, which enables us to control our instinctive movements. And
they even punish with parental tenderness the disobedience of their little
ones. So even with animals there is the beginning o f moral responsibility.
 IO 4 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
Mans W ill Is Determined at Every Moment. W e have seen that man
is not responsible in respect to intellectual capacities received at birth nor
in respect to the upbringing-bad or goodwhich he received before the
age of manhood or at least before the age of puberty. But then we arrive at
a point where man becomes aware of himself, when, endowed with the
intellectual and moral qualities already inculcated through the education
received from the outside, he becomes to some extent his own creator, evi
dently being able himself to develop, expand, and strengthen his will and
intelligence. Is a man to be held accountable if he fails to make use o f this
inner possibility?
But how can he be held accountable? It is evident that at the moment
when he finds himself capable or morally obligated to make this resolution
to work upon himself, he has not yet launched upon this spontaneous, inner
work which will make him to some degree his own creator; at that moment
he is nothing else but the product of external influences which led him to
that point. Hence, the resolution which he is about to make will depend
not upon the power of the self-acquired will and thoughtinasmuch as his
own work has not yet startedbut upon that which Nature and his educa
tion has already given him and which is independent of his own resolutions.
The resolutionwhether good or badwhich he is about to make, will be
the effect or immediate product of Nature and his education, for which he
is not responsible. So it follows that such a resolution does not in any way
imply responsibility on the part of the individual making it.
Universal Inevitability Rules Human W ill. It is evident that the idea
of human responsibility, an altogether relative idea, cannot be applied to
man taken in isolation and considered as an individual in a state of nature,
detached from the collective development of society. Viewed as such in
the presence of that universal causality, in the midst of which all that which
exists is at the same time the cause and effect, the creator and the creature,
every man appears to us at every moment o f his life as a being who is abso
lutely determined and incapable of breaking or even interrupting the uni
versal flow of life, and consequently is divested of all juridical responsibility.
W ith all the self-consciousness produced within him by the mirage o f a
sham spontaneity, and notwithstanding his will and intelligencewhich are
the indispensable conditions for building up his liberty against the external
world, including the men which surround himman, like all the animals on
this earth, remains nevertheless in absolute subjection to the universal in
evitability governing the world.7
 io5 Religion in M ods Life

c h a p t e r .o Religion in Mans Life

T h e Genesis of Faith in God Should Be the Object of Rational Study.

T o people who think logically and whose minds function on the level of
modem science, this unity of the Universe and Being has become a well
established fact. One must, however, recognize that this fact which is so
simple and self-evident that anything opposed to it appears absurd to us,
finds itself in fiagrant contradiction to the universal consciousness of hu
manity. The latter, manifesting itself in the course o f history in widely
diverse forms, has always unanimously recognized the existence of two
distinct worlds: the spiritual and material world, and the divine and real
world. Beginning with the crass fetichists who worshipped in the world
surrounding them the action of a supernatural power embodied in some
material object, all peoples have believed and still believe in the existence o f
some kind of divinity.
This overwhelming unanimity, in the opinion o f many people, carries
more weight than the proofs of science; and if the logic of a small number
o f consistent but isolated thinkers contradicts this universal assent, the worse
these people declarefor this logic.
Thus the antiquity and universality of the belief in G od have become,
contrary to all science and logic, irrefutable proofs o f the existence o f God.
But w hy should it be so? Until the age of Copernicus and Galileo the whole
world, with the exception of the Pythagoreans, believed that the sun re
volved around the earth. Did the universality o f such a belief prove the
validity of its assumptions? Beginning with the origin of historic society
down to our own period, a small conquering minority has been and still is
exploiting the forced labor of the masses of workersslaves or wage-earners.
Does it follow that the exploitation of the labor of someone else b y para
sites is not an iniquity, robbery, and theft? Here are two examples which
show that the arguments of our Deists are utterly worthless.
And, indeed, there is nothing more universal, more ancient, than ab
surdity; it is truth, on the contrary, that is relatively much younger, always
being the result, the product, o f historic development, and never its start
ing point. For man, by origin the cousin, if not the direct descendant o f
the gorilla, started out with the dark night of animal instinct in order to
arrive at the broad daylight of reason. This fully accounts for his past ab
surdities and partly consoles us for his present errors. Mans whole historic
development is simply a process o f progressive removal from pure animality
through the creation of his humanity.
Hence it follows that the antiquity of an idea, far from proving any-
 106 TH E P O L IT IC A L P H ILO SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

thing in favor o f it, should on the contrary arouse our suspicions* As to the
universality of a fallacy, it proves only one thing: the identity o f human
nature at all times and in every climate. And since all peoples have at all
times believed in and still believe in God, we must conclude, without letting
ourselves be taken in by this questionable concept, which to our mind can
not prevail against logic nor science, that the idea of divinity, which no
doubt we ourselves produced, is a necessary error in the development of
humanity. W e must ask ourselves how and w hy it came into existence, and
w hy it is still necessary for the great majority of the human species.1
Study of Origin of Religion as Important as Critical Analysis of It.
N ot until we account to ourselves for the manner in which the idea o f the
supernatural or divine world came into existence, and necessarily had to
make its appearance in the natural development o f the human mind and
human society, not until that time, strong as may be our scientific conviction
as to the absurdity o f this idea, shall we ever be able to destroy it in the
opinion o f the majority. And without this knowledge we shall never be
able to attack it in the depths o f the human being where it took root. Con
demned to a fruitless and endless struggle, we would forever have to con
tent ourselves with fighting it solely on the surface, in its countless mani
festations, the absurdity of which is no sooner beaten down by the blows
of common sense than it will reappear in a new and no less nonsensical form.
While the root o f the belief in God remains intact, it will never fail to
bring forth new offshoots. Thus, for instance, in certain circles o f civilized
society, spiritualism tends to establish itself upon the ruins of Christianity,2
How Could the Idea of Dualism Ever Arise? More than ever are w c
convinced of the urgent necessity of solving the following question:
Since man forms one -whole with Nature and is but the material prod
uct of an indefinite quantity o f exclusively material causes, how did this
dualitythe assumed existence of two opposite worlds, one spiritual, the
other material, one divine, the other naturalever come into existence, be
come established, and take such deep roots in human consciousnessP
T h e Spring Source of Religion. The incessant action and reaction of
the whole upon every single point, and the reciprocal action o f every single
point upon the whole, constitutes, as we have already said, the life, the su
preme and generic law, and the totality o f worlds which always produces
and is produced at the same time. Everlastingly active and all-powerful, this
universal solidarity, this mutual causality, which henceforth we shall des
ignate by the term Nature, created among the countless number o f other
worlds our earth, with its hierarchy o f beings, from the minerals up to man.
It constantly reproduces those beings, develops them, feeds and preserves
them, and when their time comes, or frequently before their time arrives,
it destroys, or rather transforms, them into other beings. It is then the
almighty power against which no independence or autonomy is possible;
it is the supreme being which embraces and permeates b y its irresistible
 107 Religion in Man's L ife
action the existence o f all beings. Among living beings there is not one
that does not carry within himself in a more or less developed form the
feeling or the perception of this supreme influence and o f this absolute
dependence.4
T h e Essence of Religion Is the Feeling of Absolute Dependence Upon
Eternal Nature. Religion, like all other human things, as one can see, has
its primary source in animal life. It is impossible to say that any animal,
apart from man, has anything approaching definite religion, for even the
crudest religion presupposes a degree of reflection to which no animal ex
cept man has yet risen. But it is likewise impossible to deny that the existence
of all the animals, with no exceptions, reveals all the constitutive elements,
the materials, so to speak, of religion, excepting of course that ideal aspect
thoughtwhich sooner or later will destroy it. And, indeed, what is the
real substance of all religion? It is precisely this feeling o f the absolute
dependence o f the ephemeral individual upon eternal and all-powerful
Nature.
Instinctive Fear Is the Beginning of Religion. It is difficult for us to
observe this feeling and analyze all o f its manifestations in the animals of
the lower species. W e can say, however, that the instinct of self-preserva
tion, which is found in even the relatively poorest animal organizations, is
a sort o f common wisdom engendered in everyone under the influence of
a feeling which, as we have stated, is an effect religious in its nature. In
animals endowed with a more complete organization and which are nearer
to man, this feeling is manifested in a manner more perceptible to us, in the
instinctive and panic fear, for example, which seizes them at the approach
of some great natural catastrophe such as earth tremors, forest fires, or great
storms. In general, one may say, fear is one of the predominant feelings in
animal life.
A ll animals living at large are shy, which proves that they live in a
state of incessant, instinctive fear, so that they are always obsessed with
the feeling of danger; that is to say, they are aware to some extent o f an
all-powerful influence which always and everywhere pursues, permeates,
and encompasses them. This dreadthe theologians would say the dread of
Godis the beginning of the wisdom, i.e., of religion. But with animals it
does not become religion because they lack the power of reflection which
dictates the feeling, determines its object, and transmutes it into conscious
ness, into thought. Thus there is reason in this claim of man being religious
b y nature: he is religious like other animals, but only he, upon this earth,
is conscious of bis religion.
Fear the First Object of Nascent Reflective Thought. Religion is said
to be the first awakening o f reason; yes, but in the form of unreason. Reli
gion, as we observed just now, begins with fear. And indeed, man, awaken
ing with the first rays of the inward sun which we call self-consciousness,
and emerging slowly, step b y step, from the somnambulistic half-dream,
 108 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
from the entirely instinctive existence which he led while still in the state
o f pure innocence, that is, in the animal statein addition, having been bom
like all animals, with fear o f the external world, which, it is true, produced
and nourishes him, but which at the same time oppresses, crushes, and
threatens to swallow him at every momentman was bound to make this
very fear the first object o f his nascent reflective thought
It can be assumed that with primitive man, at the first awakening of
his intelligence, this instinctive dread must have been stronger than with
the animals of other species. First, because he was bom worse equipped
for the struggle than other animals, and because his childhood lasts much
longer. And also because that very faculty of reflective thought, just
emerging into the open and not yet reaching a degree of sufficient maturity
and power to discern and make use o f external objects, was bound to wrench
man away from the union and instinctive harmony with Nature in which
like his cousin, the gorillahe had found himself prior to the awakening
o f his thought. Thus the power of reflection isolated him in the midst of
this Nature which, having become alien to him, was bound to appear
through the prism of his imagination, stimulated and enlarged b y the effect
of this incipient reflection, as a somber and mysterious power, infinitely
more hostile and menacing than in reality.
T h e Pattern of Religious Sensations Among Primitive Peoples. It is
exceedingly difficult, if not altogether impossible, to render to ourselves an
exact account of the first religious sensations and imaginings of savages. In
their details, they probably were just as diverse as the character of the vari
ous primitive tribes who experienced them, and as diverse as the climate,
the habitat, and all the other circumstances in which they were developed.
But since, after all, those sensations and fancies were human in character,
they were bound, notwithstanding this great diversity of details, to have a
few simple general points in common, which w e shall attempt to determine.
Whatever the origin o f various human groups and of the separation of
human races on this earth; whether all men had one Adam (a gorilla or the
cousin of a gorilla) as ancestor, or whether they sprang from several such
ancestors created b y Nature at different points and in different epochs
quite independently of one another, the faculty which properly constitutes
and creates the humanity of all menreflection, the power of abstraction,
reason, thought, in a word, the faculty o f conceiving ideas (and the laws
which determine the manifestation of this faculty)remain identical at all
times and places. Everywhere and always they remain the same, so that no
human development can run counter to these laws. This gives us the right
to believe that the principal phases observed in the first religious develop
ment o f one people are certain to reproduce themselves in the development
of all other populations of the earth.
Fetichism, the First Religion, Is a Religion of Fear. Judging by the
unanimous reports of travelers who for centuries had been visiting the
 io 9 Religion in Man's L ife
oceanic isles, or of those who in our day have penetrated the interior o f
Africa, fetichism must have been the first religion, the religion of all sav
age peoples, who are the least removed from the state of nature. But fetich-
ism is simply a religion of fear. It is the first human expression of that
sensation of absolute dependence, mingled with instinctive terror, which
we find at the bottom o f all animal life, and which, as we have said, consti
tutes the religious relation with all-powerful Nature o f the individual of
even the lowest species.
W ho does not know o f the influence exercised and the impression pro
duced upon all living beings, not even excepting plants, b y the great and
regular phenomena of Nature: such as the rising and setting of the sun,
moonlight, the recurrence o f the seasons, the succession o f cold and heat,
the particular and constant action o f the ocean, of mountains, deserts, or
natural catastrophes such as tempests, eclipses, and earthquakes, and also the
varied and mutually destructive relations of animals among themselves and
with the plant species? A ll these constitute for every animal a totality o f
conditions of existence, a specific character and nature o f its own, and we
are almost tempted to saya particular cultfor in all animals, in all living
beings, one can find a sort o f Nature worship, compounded o f fear and
joy, hope and anxiety, and in point of feeling greatly resembling human
religion. Even invocation and prayer are not lacking.
The Difference between the Religious Feeling of M an and Animal.
Consider the tame dog imploring his master for a caress or look; isnt he
the image of a man kneeling before his God? Doesnt that dog transfer,
with his imagination and even with the rudiments o f thought developed
within him b y experience, the omnipotence of Nature besetting him to his
master, just as man transfers it to God? W hat is the difference between the
religious feeling of man and dog? It is not reflection as such, it is the degree
of reflection, or rather the ability to establish and conceive it as an abstract
thought, to generalize it by designating it with a name, human speech hav
ing the particular characteristic that it expresses only a concept, an abstract
generality, being incapable o f naming the real things which act immediately
upon our senses.
And since speech and thought are two distinct but inseparable forms
o f one and the same act of human reflection, the latter, b y establishing the
object or terror and animal worship or of mans first natural cult, univer
salizes it, transforms it into an abstract entity, and seeks to designate it by
a name. The object really worshiped by any individual always remains the
same: it is this stone, this piece of wood; but from the moment that it is
named b y a word, it becomes an object or an abstract notion, a piece of
wood or a stone in general. Thus with the first awakening of thought
manifested b y speech begins the exclusively human world, the world of
abstractions.
The First Stirrings of the Faculty of Abstraction. Owing to this faculty
 n o T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

o f abstraction, as w e have already said, man, bom in and produced b y

Nature, creates for himself, under the conditions of that Nature, a second
existence conforming to his ideal and like himself capable o f progressive
development*6 This faculty o f abstraction, the source o f all of our knowl
edge and ideas, is likewise the only cause o f all human emancipations.
But the first awakening of that faculty, which is nothing else but reason,
does not immediately produce freedom. W hen it begins to work within
man, slowly disengaging itself from the swaddling clothes of its animal
instincts, it first manifests itself not in the form o f reasoned reflection which
recognizes its own activity and is consciously aware o f it, but in the form
of imaginative reflection or of unreason. As such it gradually delivers man
from the natural slavery besetting him in his cradle, only to plunge him
into immediate subjection to a new, thousandfold harsher, and more terrible
slaverythe slavery o f religion.
Is Fetich ism a Step Backward, Compared with the Inchoate Religious
Feelings of Animals?. It is this imaginative reflection o f man which trans
forms the natural cult, elements and traces o f which we have noted among
all animals, into a human cult, in its most elementary formthat of fetich-
ism. W e have pointed out the example o f animals instinctively worshiping
the great phenomena of Nature which actually exert upon their lives an
immediate and powerful influence, but we have never heard o f animals
worshiping an inoffensive piece o f wood, a dish-cloth, a bone, or a stone,
whereas we find that practice in the primitive religion of savages and even
in Catholicism. H ow can one account for this to all appearances strange
anomaly which, in respect to sound sense and the feeling o f reality, shows
man as being quite inferior to the most primitive animals?
Imaginative Reflection the Spring Source of Fetichistic Religions.
This absurdity is the product of the imaginative reflection of the savage.
N ot only does he feel the almighty power of Nature as other animals do,
but he makes it the object o f constant reflection, he establishes and gener
alizes it b y giving it some kind of a name, he makes it the focal center of
his infantile fancies. Still unable to embrace with his paltry thought the uni
verse, or our terrestrial sphere, or even the confined environment in which
he lives, he seeks everywhere the whereabouts o f this almighty power, o f
which the feeling, already reflected in his consciousness, continually besets
him. And by the play o f his ignorant fantasy, the workings o f which would
now be difficult to explain, he attaches this almighty power to this or that
piece of wood, rag, or stone. . . . That is pure fetichism, the most religious,
that is to say, the most absurd religion of all.
T h e Sorcery Cult. Following fetichism, or sometimes existing along
side of it, comes the sorcery cult. This cult, if not much more rational, is
more natural than pure fetichism. It surprises us less than the latter because
w e are more used to it, being still surrounded b y sorcerers: spiritualists,
mediums, clairvoyants with their hypnotizers, and even priests o f the Ro-r
Ill Religion in Man's L ife ,
man Catholic and the Greek Orthodox churches who pretend to have the
power of compelling God, with the aid of a few mysterious formulas, to
enter into [holy ] water or to become trans-substantiated into bread and
wineare not all these subduers of divinity, which readily submits to their
enchantments, also sorcerers of a kind? True, their divinity, the product
of a development lasting several thousands of years, is much more complex
than the divinity of primitive sorcery, whose only object is the idea of
almighty power, already established b y the imagination but still indeter
minate in its connotation, whether of the moral or intellectual order.
The distinction of good and bad, just and unjust, is still unknown One
is still in the dark as to what this divinity loves and hates, what it wants
or does not want; it is neither good nor bad, it is just almighty power and
nothing else but that. However, the character of the divinity begins to
take on some outline: it is egoistical and vain, it loves flattery, genuflec
tions, the humiliation and immolation of human beings, their adoration
and sacrificesand it cruelly persecutes and punishes those who dont
want to submit to its will: the rebels, the haughty ones, the impious. This,
as is known, is the basic feature of divine nature in all the past and
present gods created b y human unreason. Did there ever exist in the world
a being more atrociously jealous, vain, bloody, and egoistic than the
Jewish Jehovah or God, the Father of the Christians?
T h e Idea of God Becomes Separated from the Sorcerer. In the cult of
primitive sorcery, the divinityor this indeterminate almighty power
appears at first as inseparable from the person of the sorcerer: he is God
himself, like the fetich. But after a certain time, the role of the super
natural man, the man-God, becomes no longer tenable for the real man
especially for the savage, who has not yet found any means of refuge
from the indiscreet questions of his believers. The sound sense, the prac
tical spirit of the savage, which continues to develop parallel with his
religious imagination, ends up by showing the impossibility of any man
who is subject to human frailties and infirmities being a god. T o him the
sorcerer remains supernatural, but only for an instant, when the latter is
possessed. Possessed by whom? B y the almighty power, b y God. . . .
T h e Next Phase: Worship of Natural Phenomena as God. Hence the
divinity is usually found outside of the sorcerer. But where is it to be
sought? The fetich, the God-thing, is already obsolete, and the sorcerer,
the man-God, also is being lived down as a definite stage of religious
experience. A t a stage already advanced, developed, and enriched with the
experience and tradition of several centuries, man now seeks divinity far
away from him but still in the realm of things that have real existence: in
the sun, in the moon, in the stars, religious thought begins to embrace the
universe.
Pantheism: Seeking the Invisible Soul of the Universe. Man could
reach this point only after many centuries had passed. His faculty of
 11 z T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

abstraction, his already developed reason, became stronger and more

experienced through the practical knowledge o f things surrounding him,
and by observation of their relations or mutual causality, while the
periodical recurrence o f natural phenomena gave him the first notion o f
certain laws of Nature.
Man begins to work up an interest in the totality of phenomena and
their causes. A t the same time he begins to know himself and, owing to
this power of abstraction which enables him to rise in his thought above
his own being and to make it an object of his own reflection, he begins to
separate his material and living being from his thinking being, his external
self from his inner self, his body from his soul. But once this distinction is
made and established in his thought, he naturally transfers it to his God,
and he begins to seek the invisible soul of this universe of appearance. It
was in this manner that the pantheism of the Hindus was bound to come
into existence.
T h e Pure Idea of God. W e must dwell upon this point, for it is here
that religion, in the full sense of the word, begins, and with itreal theol
o gy and metaphysics. Until then the religious imagination o f man, obsessed
with the fixed idea of an almighty power, proceeded along its natural
course, seeking, by the w ay of experimental investigation, the source and
the cause of this almighty power,at first in the nearest objects; in the
fetiches, then in the sorcerers, still later in the great natural phenomena,
and finally in the starsbut always attaching it to some visible and real
object, far removed though it might be from him.
But now he supposes the existence of a spiritual God, an invisible,
extra-mundane God. On the other hand, until now all his gods were
limited and particular beings, holding their places among other non-divine
beings who were not endowed with the almighty power but who never
theless had real existence. But now he posits for the first time a universal
divinity: a Being of Beings, the substance and creator of all the confined
and particular beingsthe universal soul of the whole universe, the great
All. Here then begins the true God and with himtrue religion.
Unity Is Not Found in Reality but Is Created by Man's Mind. W e
should now examine the process by which man arrived at this result, in
order to establish, in its historic origin, the true nature of divinity.
The whole question reduces itself to the following: H ow did the repre
sentation of the universe and the idea of its unity ever originate with man?
Let us begin b y stating that the representation of the universe cannot exist
for the animal, for unlike all the real objects which surround himgreat
or small, far or nearthis representation is not given as an immediate
perception to our senses. It is an abstract being, and therefore it can exist
only through the abstract facultythat is, for man only.
Let us see then how it is formed within man. Man sees himself sur
rounded by external objects; he himself, inasmuch as he is a living being,
 iij Religion in Man's L ife
is an object of his own thought. A ll these objects which he slowly and
gradually learns to discern are interlinked by mutual, unvarying relations
which he also will learn to comprehend to a greater or lesser extent; and
still, notwithstanding these relations which bring them together without
merging them into one, those objects remain apart from one another.
Thus the external world presents to man only a diversity of countless
objects, actions, separate and distinct relations, without the slightest sem
blance of unity: it is an endless juxtaposition, but it is not a totality.
Whence comes unity? It lies in mans thought. Mans intelligence is
endowed with an abstract faculty which enables him, after he has slowly
gone over and examined separately, one after the other, a number of
objects to comprehend them instantaneously in a single representation, to
unite them in a single act o f thought. Thus it is mans thought which
creates unity and transfers it to the diversity of the external world.
God Is the Highest Abstraction. It follows that this unity is not a
concrete and real being, but an abstract being, produced only b y the
abstracting faculty of man. W e say abstracting because, in order to unite
so many different objects in a single representation, our thought must
abstract all their differencesthat is, their separate and real existenceand
to retain only what they have in common. It follows that the greater the
number of objects comprehended b y this conceptual unity, the more
extensive its sweepwhich constitutes its positive determinationthe more
abstract it becomes and the more it is stripped of reality.
Life with all its exuberance and transitory magnificence is to be found
below, in diversitydeath with its eternal and sublime monotony is high
above, in unity. T r y to rise higher and higher through this power of
abstraction, to go beyond this terrestrial world, embrace in one single
thought the solar world, imagine this sublime unity: what would remain
to fill it up? The savage would find it difficult to answer such a question,
but we shall answer it for him: there would remain matter with what we
call the power of abstraction, matter in motion with its various phenomena
such as light, heat, electricity, and magnetism, which are, as it has been
proven, different manifestations of one and the same thing.
But if, through the power of this boundless faculty o f abstraction,
which knows no limit, you rise still higher, above the solar world, and
you unite in your thought not only the millions of suns which we see
shining in the firmament, but also the myriads of invisible solar systems
the existence o f which we infer b y our thought, b y the same reason which,
knowing no limits to the working of its abstracting faculty, refuses to
believe that the universe (that is to say, the totality of all the existing
worlds) may have a limit or an endand then abstracting from it, by the
same thought, the particular existence of every one of the existing worlds,
when you try to visualize the unity of this infinite universe, what remains
to determine it and fill it up? O nly one word, one abstraction: the Inde
terminate Bemg~-thzt is, immobility, the void, absolute nothingness; God.
 1 14 T H E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

G od is then the absolute abstraction, the product of human thought

itself, which, like the power of abstraction, has passed beyond all the
known beings, all the existing worlds, and, having divested itself b y this act
from all real content, having arrived at nothing else but the absolute
world, it poses before itself, without, however, recognizing itself in this
sublime nudity, as the One and Only Supreme Being.9

CHAPTER I I M an H ad to Look fo r God

Gods Attributes. In all the religions which divide the world among
themselves and which have a more or less developed theologyexcept
Buddhism, the strange doctrine o f which, completely misunderstood b y its
hundreds of millions o f followers, established a religion without Godin
all the systems o f metaphysics, G od appears to us above all as a supreme
being, eternally pre-existent and pre-determining, containing in himself
the thought and the generating will anterior to all existence: the source
and eternal cause o f all creation, immutable and always equal to himself
in the universal movement o f created worlds. A s we have already seen,
this God is not found in the real universe, at least not in that portion o f it
which lies within the reach of mans knowledge. N o t having been able to
find God outside of himself, man had to look for him within himself. H ow
did he look for him? B y disregarding all living and real things, all visible
and known worlds.
But we have seen that at the end o f this fruitless journey, man's
abstracting faculty or action finds only a single object: itself, divested of
all content and deprived of all movement; it finds itself as an abstraction,
as an absolutely immovable and absolutely empty being. W e would say:
absolute non-Being. But religious fantasy says: the Supreme BeingGod.
Man Found God and Became Its Creature. Besides, as we have
observed earlier, it was led to this abstraction b y taking the example of the
difference or even the opposition which reflection, already developed to
this point, begins to establish between the external manhis bodyand his
inner world, comprising his thought and willthe human soul. N ot being
aware, o f course, that the latter is nothing but the product and the last,
always renewed, expression o f mans organism; seeing, on the contrary,
that in daily life the body seems always to obey the suggestions of thought
ii5 Had to Look for G od W ithin Himself
and will, and therefore assuming that the soul is, if not the creator, at least
the master o f the body, (which therefore has no other mission than that
o f ministering to it and giving it outward expression)the religious man,
from the moment that, owing to his faculty of abstraction, he arrived, in
the manner w e have just described, at the conception of a universal and
supreme being, which is no other thing than this power of abstraction
positing itself as its own object, made of it the soul o f the whole universe:
God.
T h e Created Thing Becomes the Creator. Thus the true Godthe
universal, external, immutable God created by the two-fold action of
religious imagination and mans abstractive facultywas posited for the
first time in history. But from the moment that God became known and
established, man, forgetting or rather not being aware o f the action of his
own brain which created this God, and not being able to recognize him
self any longer in his own creationthe universal abstractionbegan to
worship i t Thus the respective roles o f 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 o f them, though hardly
more privileged than the rest.
T h e Logical Implications of the Recognition of God. Once God has
been posited, the subsequent progressive development of various theol
ogies can be explained naturally as the reflection of the development o f
humanity in history. For as soon as the idea of a supernatural and supreme
being had got hold of mans imagination and established itself as his reli
gious convictionto the extent that the reality o f this being appeared to
him more certain than that o f real things to be seen and touched with his
handsit began to appear natural to him that this idea should become the
principal basis of ail human experience, and that it should modify, per
meate, and dominate it absolutely.
Immediately the Supreme Being appeared to him as the absolute master,
as thought, will, the source o f everythingas the creator and regulator o f
all things. Nothing could rival him, and everything had to vanish in his
presence since the truth o f everything resided in him alone, and every
particular being, man included, powerful as it might appear, could exist
henceforth only with Gods sanction. A ll 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.
God Is a Robber. Henceforth, as a natural consequence, man attrib
uted to God all the qualities, forces, and virtues which he gradually
discovered in himself or in his surroundings. W e have seen that God,
posited as a supreme being, is simply an absolute abstraction, devoid o f all
reality, content, and determination, and that he is naked and null like
nothingness itself. And as such he fills and enriches himself with all the
realities of the existing world, and though only its abstraction he appears
 I 16 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

to the religious fantasy as its Lord and Master. Hence it follows that God
is the absolute despoiler and that since anthropomorphism is the very
essence o f all religion, Heaven-the habitation of the immortal godsis
nothing but a crooked mirror which sends back to the believing man his
own image in a reversed and swollen form.
Religion Distorts Natural Trends. But the action o f religion consists
not only in that it takes away from the earth its richness and natural
powers, and from man his faculties and virtues in the measure that he
discovers them in his historic development, in order to transfer them to
Heaven and transmute them into so many divine beings or attributes. In
effecting this transformation, religion radically changes the nature o f
those powers and qualities, and it falsifies and corrupts them, giving them a
direction that is diametrically opposed to their original trend.
Divine Love and Justice Become Scourges of Humanity. Thus mans
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 o f divinity into dis
paragement of humanity. Mans love, the immense natural solidarity which
interlinks all individuals, all peoples, and, rendering the happiness and
liberty o f everyone dependent upon the liberty and happiness of others,
must unite all o f them sooner or later, in spite of differences o f race and
color, into one brotherly communethis love, transmuted into divine love
and religious charity, forthwith becomes the scourge o f humanity. A ll
the blood shed in the name of religion from the beginning o f history, and
the millions o f human victims immolated for the greater glory o f God,
bear witness to it. . . .
And finally, justice itself, the future mother o f equality, once carried
over by religious fantasy into celestial regions and transformed into divine
justice, immediately comes back to the earth in the theological form of
divine grace, and always and everywhere siding with the strongest, it
sows among men only violence, privileges, monopolies, and all the
monstrous inequalities consecrated b y historic right.
T he Historic Necessity of Religion. W e do not pretend therewith to
deny the historic necessity of religion, nor do we affirm that it has been an
absolute evil in history. If it is such an evil, it was, and unfortunately still
is, an inevitable evil for the vast ignorant majority o f humanity, being just
as inevitable as errors and divagations were in the development o f all
human faculties. Religion, as we have said, is the first awakening o f mans
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 o f divinity, a yoke which in the long run will have to be
ii7 Man Had to Look for G od W ithin Himself
broken in order to conquer in fact the reasonable reason, the true truth,
the full justice, and real liberty.
Religion the First Step Toward Humanity. In religion, man the ani
mal, 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 step , makes him
seek the divine instead of the human. Through religion, peoples who have
scarcely freed themselves from 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.1
A ll the religions with their gods were never anything else but the
creation o f the credulous fantasy of men who had not yet reached the
level of pure reflection and free thought based upon science. Consequently,
the religious Heaven was nothing but a mirage in which man, exalted by
faith, so long ago encountered his own image, one, however, that was
enlarged and reversedthat is, deified.
The history of religions, of the grandeur and decline of the gods suc
ceeding one another, is therefore nothing but the history o f the develop
ment of the collective intelligence and consciousness of mankind. In the
measure that they discovered in themselves or in external Nature a power,
a capacity, or any kind o f quality, they attributed these to their gods, after
exaggerating and enlarging them beyond measure, as children do, b y an
act of religious fantasy. Thus, owing to this modesty and generosity of
men, Heaven waxed rich with the spoils of earth, and, by a natural conse
quence, the richer Heaven grew, the more wretched humanity became.
Once installed, G od was naturally proclaimed the master, the source, and
disposer of all things, the real world was nothing but his reflection, and
man, his unconscious creator, bowed down before him, avowing himself
G ods creature and slave.
Christianity Is the Absolute and Final Religion. Christianity is pre
cisely the religion par excellence, because it exhibits and manifests the very
nature and essence of every religion, which are: systematic, absolute
impoverishment, enslavement, and abasement of humanity for the benefit
of divinitythe supreme principle not only o f every religion but o f all
metaphysics, and of the deistic and the pantheistic schools alike. G od being
everything, the real world and man are nothing. God being truth, justice,
and infinite life, man is falsehood, iniquity, and death. God being master,
man is the slave. Incapable o f finding for himself the road to truth and
justice, he has to receive them as a revelation from above, through inter
mediaries elected and sent by divine grace.
But whoever says revelation says revealers, prophets, and priests, and
these, once recognized as G od s representatives on earth, as teachers and
leaders o f humanity toward eternal life, receive thereby the mission of
directing, governing, and commanding it in its earthly existence. A ll men
 I l8 TH E PO L IT IC A L P H ILO SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
owe them faith and absolute obedience. Slaves o f God, men must also be
slaves o f the Church and the State, in so far as the latter is consecrated by
the Church. O f all the religions that existed and still exist, Christianity was
the only one that understood this fact perfectly, and among all the Chris
tian sects it was the Roman Catholic Church that proclaimed and carried
it out with rigorous consistency. That is w hy Christianity is the absolute
religion, the final religion, and w h y the Apostolic and Roman Church
is the only consistent, legitimate, and divine church.
W ith all due deference to all the semi-philosophers, and to all the so-
called religious thinkers, we say: The existence of God implies the abdi
cation of human reason and justice; it is the negation of human liberty and
it necessarily ends in both theoretical and practical slavery.
God Connotes the Negation of Liberty. And unless w e 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.
W e defy anyone to avoid this circle; and now let all choose.2
Religion Is Always Allied with Tyranny. In addition, history shows
us that the preachers of all religions, except those o f the persecuted
churches, were allied with tyranny. And even the persecuted priests, while
combating and cursing the powers that persecuted them, were they not
at the same time disciplining their own believers and thus laying the
ground for a new tyranny? Intellectual slavery, of whatever nature it may
be, will always have as a natural result both political and social slavery.
A t the present time Christianity, in its various forms, and along with it
the doctrinaire and deistic metaphysics which sprang from Christianity
and which essentially is nothing but theology in disguise, are without doubt
the most formidable obstacles to the emancipation of society. The proof
of this is that all the governments, all the statesmen of Europe, who are
neither metaphysicians, nor theologians, nor deists, and who at heart
believe in neither God nor Devil, passionately and obstinately defend
metaphysics as well as religion, and any sort of religion, so long as it
teaches, as all of them do in any case, patience, resignation, and submission.
Religion Must Be Combated. The obstinacy with which the states
men defend religion proves how necessary it is to combat and overthrow it.
Is it necessary to recall here to what extent religious influences demor
alize and corrupt the people? T h ey destroy their reason, the chief
instrument of human emancipation, and b y filling man's mind with
divine absurdities, they reduce the people to imbecility, which is the
foundation of slavery. T h ey kill mans working energy, which is his
greatest glory and salvation, work being the act by which man become^
ii9 Man Had to Look jo t G od Within Himself
a creator, b y which he fashions his world; it is the foundation and the
condition o f human existence and likewise the means whereby man wins
at the same time his liberty and his human dignity.
Religion destroys this productive power in people b y inculcating
disdain for earthly life in comparison with celestial beatitude and indoc
trinating the people with the idea that work is a curse or a deserved punish
ment while idleness is a divine privilege. Religions kill in man the idea
of justice, that strict guardian of brotherhood and the supreme condition
o f peace, ever tipping the balance on the side of the strongest, who are
always the privileged objects of divine solitude, grace, and benediction.
And, finally, religion destroys in men their humanity, replacing it in their
hearts with divine cruelty.
Religions Are Founded on Blood. A ll religions are founded on blood,
for all, as is known, rest essentially on the idea o f sacrificethat is, on the
perpetual immolation of humanity to the insatiable vengeance o f divinity.
In this bloody mystery man is always the victim, and the priesta man also,
but one privileged b y graceis the divine executioner. That explains w hy
the priests o f all religions, the best, the most humane, the gentlest, almost
always have at the bottom of their heartsand if not in their hearts, in
their minds and imaginations (and we know the influence exercised by
either upon the hearts o f men)something cruel and bloody. And that is
w hy whenever the question o f abolishing capital punishment comes up
for discussion, the priestso f the Roman Catholic, Russian and Greek
Orthodox, and the Protestant churchesare unanimously for preserving
this punishment.
Trium ph of Humanity Incompatible with Survival of Religion. The
Christian religion, more than any other religion, was founded upon blood,
and was historically baptized in it. One can count the millions o f victims
which this religion of love and forgiveness has sacrificed to the vengeance
o f its God* Let us recall the tortures which it invented and inflicted upon
its victims. And has it now become more gentle and humane? N ot at all!
Shaken b y indifference and skepticism, it has merely become powerless,
or rather less powerful, for unfortunately even now it is not altogether
deprived of its power to cause harm.
Observe it in the countries where, galvanized b y reactionary passions,
it gives the outward impression of coming to life again: is not its first
motto vengeance and blood, and its second the abdication of human reason,
and slavery its conclusion? W hile Christianity and the Christian preachers,
or any other divine religion for that matter, continue exercising the
slightest influence upon the masses of the people, reason, liberty, human
ity, and justice will never triumph on the earth. For so long as the masses
of the people are sunk in religious superstition, they will always be a
pliable instrument in the hands of all despotic powers leagued against the
emancipation of humanity.
 120 TH E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

That is w hy it is of the utmost importance to free the masses from

religious superstition, not only because of our love for them, but for our
own sake, in order to save our own liberty and security. This aim, how
ever, can be attained only in two ways: through rational science and
through the propaganda of Socialism?
Only Social Revolution Can Destroy Religion. It is not the propa
ganda of free thought that will be able to kill religion in the minds o f the
people. The propaganda of free thought is certainly very useful; it is
indispensable as an excellent means of converting individuals of advanced,
progressive views. But it will hardly be able to make a breach in the
people's ignorance because religion is not only an aberration or a devia
tion of thought but it still retains its special character of a natural, living,
powerful protest on the part of the masses against their narrow and
wretched lives. The people go to church as they go to a pot-house, in
order to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to see themselves in
their imagination, for a few minutes at least, free and happy, as happy
as others, the well-to-do people. Give them a human existence, and they
will never go into a pot-house or a church. And it is only the Social
Revolution that can and shall give them such an existence.4

CHAPTER I 2 Ethics : D ivine or

T h e Dialectics of Religion. Religion, as we have said, is the first

awakening of human reason in the form o f divine unreason. It is the first
gleam of human truth through the divine veil of falsehood; the first mani
festation of human morality, o f justice and right, through the historic
iniquities o f divine grace. And, finally, it is the apprenticeship of liberty
under the humiliating and painful yoke o f 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.
Religion Inaugurates a New Bondage in Place of Natural Slavery.
In religion, manthe animalin 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, mis
directing his steps, makes him seek the divine instead of the human.
Through religion, peoples who have scarcely freed themselves from
natural slavery in which other animal species are deeply sunk, forthwith
i2i Ethics: Divine or Bourgeois Morality
relapse into a new slavery, into bondage to strong men and castes priv
ileged b y divine election.
Gods as Tounders of States. One of the principal attributes o f the
immortal Gods consists, as we know, in their acting as legislators for
human society, as founders of the State. Manso nearly all religions
maintainwere 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 conse
crated by Heaven must be obeyed, always and at any price.
Morality Rooted in the Animal Nature of Man. This is very con
venient for the rulers but very inconvenient for the governed. And since
we belong with the latter, we have a particular interest in closely examin
ing 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, incap
able of movement and action o f his own: absolute Non-Being, imagined
as absolute being and endowed with life only b y religious fantasy;
absolutely void o f all content and enriched only with the realities o f
earth; rendering back to man that o f which he had robbed him only in a
denaturalized, corrupted, divine formGod can neither be good nor
wicked, neither just nor unjust. He is not capable of desiring, of establish
ing anything, for in reality he is nothing, and becomes everything only by
an act of religious credulity.
T h e Root of Ideas of Justice and Good. Consequently, if this credu
lity discovered in God the ideas o f 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 G od with those attributes
unless he himself possesses them. W here did he find them? In himself, of
course. But whatever man has came down to him from his animal stage
his spirit being simply the unfolding o f his animal nature. Thus the idea
of justice and good, Uke all other human things, must have had their root
in man's very animality.1
Basis of Morality Is to Be Found Only in Society. 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 foundand can only be foundin associated individuals. In
order to prove it, we shall begin b y doing justice, once and for all, to the
isolated or absolute individual of the idealists.
T h e Solitary Individual is a Fiction. This solitary and abstract indi
 X22 TH E PO L IT IC A L PH ILO SO PH Y OF B A K U N IN
vidual is just as much of a fiction as is God. Both were created simulta
neously by the fantasy of believers or b y childish reason, not b y 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 o f the idealist school. Both representing abstrac
tions that are devoid of any content and incompatible with any kind of
reality, they end in mere nothingness.
I believe I have already proved the immorality of the God-fiction.
N o w 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.
T h e Self-Contradictory Character of the Idea of an Isolated Individ
ual. It will not be very difficult for me to prove that the human individ
ual 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; conse
quently, he does not stand in need of anyone, not even God, and all the
less o f other men. Logically he should not endure, alongside or above him,
the existence of an equal or superior individual, immortal and infinite to
the same extent or to a larger degree than himself. B y right he should be
the only man on the earth, and even more than that: he should be
able to declare himself the sole being, the whole world. For infinity, when
it meets anything outside o f itself, meets a limit, is no more infinity, and
when two infinities meet, they cancel each other.
T h e Contradictory Logic of the Self-Sufficient Individual Can Be
Overcome Only by the Materialist Point of View. W h y do the theo
logians and metaphysicians, who otherwise have proven themselves subtle
logicians, let themselves run into this inconsistency b y admitting the
existence o f 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? T h ey were driven to it b y the absolute impossibility
o f denying the real existence, the mortality as well as the mutual inde
pendence 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 b y no means do they have a separate existence from their
mortal and bodily exterior, and that in limiting themselves and finding
themselves in mutual dependence upon one another, in meeting outside of
themselves an infinity of diverse objects, human individuals, like every
thing 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 material
ism or experimental and rational science. And they are called upon to do
it b y the mighty voice of the century.
123 Ethics: Divine or Bourgeois Morality
Idealists Escape From Reality into Contradictions of Metaphysics.
T h ey 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 o f idealistic fanciesrebel
against frank conclusions and the full daylight o f simple truth. T h ey have
such a horror o f it that they prefer to endure the contradiction which they
themselves have created b y this absurd fiction o f an immortal soul, or hold
it their duty to seek its solution in a new absurditythe fiction of God.
From the point o f view of theory, G od is in reality nothing else but
the last refuge and the supreme expression o f all the absurdities and con
tradictions 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 wordthat is to
say, in a refined and rationalized theologyhe, on the contrary, consti
tutes 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 Godthat is, through an absurdity
enveloped as much as possible in rational appearance.
T h e Idea of God as the Only Solution of Contradictions. The exist
ence of a personal G od and the immortality of the soul are inseparable
fictions; they are tw o 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 sat
isfy you, the worse it is for you. T hey have no other explanation to offer.2
T he Fiction of Individual Morality Is the Negation of A ll Morality.
The fiction of the immortality o f 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 G od are admitted, one also must recognize that
there can be only one single morality, that is, the divine revealed law,
religious moralitythe bond existing between the immortal soul and God,
through G ods grace. Outside of this irrational, miraculous, and mystic
bond, the only holy and saving bond, and outside o f the consequences that
it entails for men, all the other bonds are null and insignificant. Divine
morality is the absolute negation of human morality.
 124 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
The Egoism of Christian Morality. Divine morality found its per
fect expression in the Christian maxim: Thou shalt love G od more than
thyself and thou shalt love thy neighbor as much as thyself, which implies
the sacrifice of both oneself and ones neighbor to God. One can admit
the sacrifice o f oneself, this being an obvious act of sheer folly, but the
sacrifice o f ones fellow-man is from the human point of view absolutely
immoral. And w hy am I forced toward this inhuman sacrifice? For the
salvation o f 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 b y its forced collective
character and the authoritarian, hierarchic, and despotic unity o f the
Church, appears in all its cynical frankness in Protestantism, which is a
sort of religious Let him save himself who can.
Egoism is the Basis of Idealistic Systems. The metaphysicians in their
turn try to mitigate this egoism, which is the inherent and fundamental
principle o f all idealistic doctrines, by speaking very littleas little as
possibleof mans relations with God, while dealing at length with the
relations o f 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 neces
sary to recognize the relations of man to God. And one has to recognize
that in the face o f 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.
T h e Contradictions in the Metaphysical Theory of Morality. Thus
metaphysicians seek morality in the relations 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 o f his
relations with other human individuals. Such is the ineradicable contradic
tion 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 m y relations with men; it can only
determine my relations with God, as it is quite logically affirmed b y theol
ogy. So far as men are concerned, from the point o f view o f 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.
The Moral Law Is Not an Individual But a Social Fact. 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
125 Ethics: Divine or Bourgeois Morality
with them to observe equality, justice, and identical morality. T o this I
shall answer that if it is true that the moral law contains such a command
ment, I must hence conclude that it was not created nor inscribed in my
heart. For it necessarily presupposes an existence preceding in time m y
relations with other men, my fellow-creatures, and so it did not create
those relations, but, having found them already established, it only reg
ulates 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.
T he Doctrine of Innate Moral Ideas. W ere 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. T h ey 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 individ
ual himself, who cannot realize it and who succeeds in deciphering it
within himself only by developing in the society o f his fellow-creatures;
in a word, that he becomes conscious o f this law which is inherent in him
only through his relations with other men.
T h e Platonic Soul. This plausible, if not judicious, explanation leads
us to the doctrine o f innate ideas, feelings, and principles. It is an old
familiar doctrine. The human soul, immortal and infinite in its essence,
but corporeally determined, limited, weighed 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. W hat was its nature, what had it
been doing during all the time it had left behind it? O nly G od 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 contra
dictions, and in order to solve it one has to turn to the supreme contradic
tion, God himself. A t 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 b y the grossly material conditions
of its birth and its existence upon the earth, it is no more capable of con
ceiving them, or even of bringing them back into its memory. It is as if it
had never possessed them at all.
T h e Soul Is Stirred into Self-Awareness. But here a multitude of
human souls, all equally immortal in their essence and all equally brutalized,
debased, and materialized by their earthly existence, meet one another as
 12 6 T H E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
members o f human society. A t first they recognize one another so little
that one materialized soul devours another. Cannibalism, as we know, was
the first human practice. Then, continuing to wage their fierce wars,
every one o f them strives to enslave the othersthis is the long period of
slavery, which is still far from having drawn to an end.
Neither cannibalism nor slavery reveals any traces of divine principles.
But in this incessant struggle of peoples and men against one another which
constitutes history and which has resulted in immeasurable sufferings,
the souls gradually begin to stir from their torpor, begin to come into
their own, recognize themselves, and get an ever deeper knowledge of
their intimate being; in addition, roused and provoked b y one another,
they begin to recollect themselves, at first in a form o f presentiment, and
then in glimpses, finally grasping ever more clearly the principles which
God from time immemorial had traced with his own hand.
Discovery and Dissemination of Divine Truths of Morality. This
awakening and recollection take place at first not in the more infinite and
immortal souls. That would be absurd since infinity does not admit of
any comparative degrees: the soul of the worst idiot is just as infinite and
immortal as that of the greatest genius.
It takes place in the less grossly materialized souls, which are therefore
the most capable of awakening and recollecting themselves. These are
men of genius, inspired b y God, men of divine revelation, legislators and
prophets. Once these great and saintly men, illumined and inspired b y
the spirit, without whose aid nothing great or good is done in this world,
have discovered within themselves one of those divine truths which every
man subconsciously carries within his own soul, it naturally becomes easier
for the more grossly materialized souls to make the same discovery within
themselves. It is thus that every great truth, all the eternal principles
which manifested themselves at first in history as divine revelations, are
later reduced to truths which no doubt are divine but which nevertheless
everyone can and should find in himself and recognize as the bases of his
own infinite essence or his immortal soul.
This explains how a truth, at first revealed by one man, spreads out
wardly little by little, makes converts, few in number at the start and
usually persecuted, as well as the master himself, b y the masses, and b y
the official representatives of society; and then, spreading more and more
because o f those persecutions, it ends up b y getting hold sooner or later
of the collective mind. After having been an exclusively individual truth,
it finally is changed into a socially accepted truth; actualizedfor good or
evilin the public and private institutions o f society, it becomes law.
T h e Metaphysical Theory of Morality is O ld Theology in Disguise.
Such is the general theory of the moralists of the metaphysical school. A t
first sight, as I have already said, it appears to be a quite plausible theory,
seemingly successful in reconciling the most disparate things; divine revel
127 Ethics: Divine or Bourgeois Morality
ation and human reason, immortality and the absolute independence of
individualswith their mortality and their absolute dependence, individ
ualism, and Socialism. But when we examine this theory and its conse
quences, w e can easily see that this is only an apparent reconciliation
revealing under the false-face of rationalism and Socialism the old triumph
o f divine absurdity over human reason, and individual egoism over social
solidarity. In the last instance, it leads to the absolute isolation o f the
individual and consequently to the negation o f all morality.
Asocial Character of Metaphysical Morality. W hat w e have to con
sider here is the moral consequences of this theory. Let us establish first that
its morality, notwithstanding its socialistic appearance, is a deeply and
exclusively individualistic morality. That having been established, it will
not be difficult to prove that, such being its dominant character, it is in
fact the negation of all morality.
In this theory the immortal and individual soul o f every man, which is
infinite and absolutely complete in its essence, and as such not standing in
need of anyone else, nor having to enter into any kind of inter-relations
in order to find its completionfinds itself at first imprisoned and as if
annihilated in the mortal body. W hile in this fallen state, the reason for
which probably will always remain unknown to us, the human mind being
incapable of discovering those reasons which are to be found only in the
absolute mystery, in God; reduced to this material state and to absolute
dependence upon the external world, the human soul stands in need o f
society in order to wake up, to bring back to mind the memory of itself,
to become aware of itself and o f the divine principles which from time
immemorial have been lodged in it by God and which constitute its true
essence.
Contemplation of Divine Absurdity. Such is the socialistic character
and the socialistic aspect o f this theory. The relations o f men to men and
o f every human individual to the rest o f his kindin short, social life
appear only as a necessary means of development, as a bridge, and not as
a goal. The absolute and final goal of every individual is himself, apart
from all the other human individualsit is himself facing the absolute
individuality: God. H e needs other men in order to emerge from his
state o f near-annihilation upon earth, in order to rediscover himself, to
grasp again his immortal essence, but once he has found this essence, hence
forth finding his source o f life in that alone, he turns his back upon other
people and sinks into contemplation of the mystical absurdity, into
adoration o f his God.8
 128 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

c h a p t e r 13 Ethics: Exploitation
o f the Masses

Self-Sufficiency of the Individual- If he [the human individual] still

retains some relations with other people, it is not because o f an ethical
urge, and not because of his love for them, for w e love only those whom
we need or who need us. But a man who has just rediscovered his infinite
and immortal essence, and who is complete in himself, stands in need o f no
one but God, who, because of the mystery, which only metaphysicians
understand, seems to possess an infinity which is more infinite and an
immortality which is more immortal than that of men. Henceforth,
sustained by divine omniscience and omnipotence, the self-centered and
free individual does not feel any more the need of associating with other
men. And if he still continues to maintain relations with them, he does
it only for two reasons: First, while he is still wrapped up in his mortal
body, he has to eat, get clothes and shelter, and defend himself against
external Nature as well as against attacks b y men; and if he is a civilized
man, he stands in need of a certain minimum o f material things which
give him ease, comfort, and luxury, some of which, unknown m our
ancestors, are now considered objects of prime necessity.
Exploitation Is the Logical Consequence of the Idea of Morally
Independent Individuals. He could, of course, follow the example o f
the saints of past centuries and seclude himself in a cave, subsisting upon
roots. But this does not appear to be to the taste of modem saints, who
no doubt believe that material comfort is necessary for the salvation of
the soul. Man thus cannot get along without those things. But those things
can be produced only b y the collective labor o f men; the isolated labor o f
one man would not be able to produce one millionth part thereof. So it
follows that the individual in possession of his immortal soul and his inner
liberty independent of societythe modem sainthas material need of
society, without feeling the slightest need of society from a moral point
of view.
But how should we name relations which, being motivated only by
material needs, are not sanctioned nor backed up by some moral need?
Evidently there is only one name for it: Exploitation. And, indeed, in the
metaphysical morality and in the bourgeois society which, as we know, is
based on this morality, every individual necessarily becomes the exploiter
of societythat is, of everyone elseand the role of the State, in its various
forms, beginning with the theocratic State and absolute monarchy and
 129 Ethics: Exploitation of the Masses
ending with the most democratic Republic based upon genuine universal
suffrage, consists only in regulating and guaranteeing this mutual exploi
tation.
Guerra Omnium Contra Omnia: T he Inevitable Result of Meta
physical Morality. In bourgeois society, based upon metaphysical moral
ity, every individual, through necessity or by the very logic of his
position, appears as an exploiter of others, for materially he stands in need
of everyone else, though morally he needs no one. Consequently, everyone
escaping social solidarity as a hindrance to the full liberty of his soul, but
seeing it as a necessary means to maintain his own body, considers society
only from the point of view of personal, material utility, contributing
only that which is absolutely necessary, to have not the right but the
power to obtain for himself this utility.
Everyone views society from the angle o f an exploiter. But when all
are exploiters, they necessarily must divide into fortunate and unfortunate
exploiters, for every exploitation presupposes the existence of persons
exploited. There are actual exploiters and those who can be classed in
that category only when taken in the potential sense o f this term. The
latter constitute the majority o f people who simply aspire to become
exploiters but are not such in reality, being in fact ceaselessly exploited.
Here then is what metaphysical or bourgeois ethics lead to in the realm o f
social economy: to a ruthless and never-ending war among all individuals,
to a furious war in which the majority perishes in order to assure the
triumph of and prosperity for a small number of people.
Love For Men Takes Second Place After Love of God. The second
reason which may lead an individual who has already arrived at the stage
of self-possession to maintain his relations with other people is the desire
to please God and to carry out the duty he feels to fulfill the Second
Commandment.
The First Commandment enjoins man to love G od more than himself;
the second, to love men, ones fellow-creatures, as much as oneself, and
to do to them, for the love o f God> all the good which one would like
to have done to oneself.
Note these words: for the love of God. T h ey express perfectly the
character of the only human love possible in metaphysical ethics, which
consists precisely in not loving men for their own sake, for their own
need, but solely in order to please the sovereign master. This, however, is
the way it must be: once metaphysics admits the existence of God and the
relations between God and men, it must, like theology, subordinate to
them all human relations. The idea of God absorbs and destroys all that
which is not God, replacing human and earthly realities with divine
fictions.
God Cannot Love His Subjects. In the metaphysical morality, as I
have said, the man who has arrived at conscious awareness of his immortal
 130 TH E P O L IT IC A L PH ILO SO PH Y OF B A K U N IN
soul and its individual freedom before God and in God, cannot love men,
for morally he does not need them any more, and one can only love those
who have need of one.
If theologians and metaphysicians are to be believed, the first condition
has been fulfilled in the relations of men to God, it being claimed by both
that man cannot get along without God. Man then can and should love
God, for he needs him so much. As to the second condition-the possibil
ity of loving only the one who feels the need of this loveit has not in
the least been realized in the relations of man to God. It would be impious
to say that God may feel the need of mans love. For to feel any need
whatsoever is to lack something essential to the fullness of being, and it is
therefore a manifestation of weakness, an avowal of poverty. God, abso
lutely complete in himself, cannot feel the need of anyone or anything.
N ot standing in need of mens love, he cannot love them; and that which
is called G od s love for men is in reality nothing but absolute overbearing
power, similar to and naturally more formidable than the power exercised
b y the mighty German Emperor toward his subjects.
True Love Can Exist Only Among Equals. True, real love, the
expression of a mutual and equally felt need, can exist only among equals.
The love of the superior for the inferior is oppression, effacement, con
tempt, egoism, pride, and vanity triumphant in a feeling of grandeur based
upon the humiliation of the other party. And the love of the inferior for
the superior is humiliation, the fears and the hopes o f a slave who expects
from his master either happiness or misfortune.
Gods Relation to Man Is a Master-Slave Relation. Such is the
character o f the so-called love o f God for men and of men for God. It is
despotism on the part of one and slavery on the part of the other.
W hat do these words signify: to love men and to do good to them,
for the love of God? It means to treat them as God would have them
treated. And how does he want them to be treated? Like slaves! God by
his nature is forced to treat them in the following manner: Being himself
the absolute Master, he is compelled to consider them as absolute slaves;
and since he considers them slaves, he cannot treat them otherwise.
There is only one way to emancipate those slaves, and that is self-
abdication, self-annihilation, and disappearance on the part of God. But
that would be too much to demand from this almighty power. He could
sacrifice his only son, as the Gospels tell us, to reconcile the strange love
which he bears toward men with his no less peculiar eternal justice. But
to abdicate, to commit suicide for the love o f menthat he will never do,
at least not so long as he is not forced to do it by scientific criticism. So
long as the credulous fancy of men suffers his existence, he will be the
absolute sovereign, the master of slaves. It is clear then that to treat men
according to G od can mean nothing else but treat them as slaves.
M ans Love According to God. Mans love in the image of G od is
131 Ethics: Exploitation o f the Masses
love for their slavery. I, the immortal and complete individual b y the
grace of God, who feel myself free precisely because I am the slave o f
God, dont need any man to render m y happiness and my intellectual and
moral existence more complete, but I maintain my relations with them in
order to obey God, and in loving them for the sake of the love of God,
in treating them pursuant to G od s love, I want them to be G ods slaves
like myself. If it then pleases the Sovereign Lord to choose me for the
task of making his holy will prevail upon the earth, I shall know well how
to force men to be slaves.
Such is the true character o f that which G ods sincere worshipers call
their love for men. It is not so much devotion on the part of those who
love as the forced sacrifice o f those who are the objects, or rather the
victims, of that love. It is not their emancipation, it is their enslavement
for the greater glory of God. And it is thus that divine authority was
transformed into human authority and that the Church became the
founder of the State.
Rule by the Elect. According to this theory, ail men should serve
G od in this fashion. But, as we know, many are called, but few are chosen.
And besides, if all were capable, o f fulfilling it in equal measure, that is to
say, if all had arrived at the same degree of intellectual and moral perfec
tion, o f saintliness and liberty in God, this service would become super
fluous. If it is necessary, it is because the vast majority of human individ
uals have not yet arrived at that point, from which follows that this still
ignorant and profane mass of people has to be loved and treated in
accordance with the ways of G odthat hi to say, to be governed and
enslaved by a minority of saints, whom God, in one w ay or another,
never fails himself to choose and to establish in a privileged position
enabling them to fulfill this duty.
Everything Eor the People, Nothing By the People. The sacramental
formula for governing the masses of peoplefor their own good no doubt,
for the salvation of their souls, if not their bodiesused by the saints as
well as by the nobles in the theocratic and aristocratic States, and also by
the intellectuals and the rich people in the doctrinaire, liberal, and even
republican States based upon universal suffrage, is always the same:
Everything for the people, nothing by the people
W hich signifies that saints, nobles, or privileged groupsprivileged in
point of wealth or in point o f possession of scientifically trained minds
are all nearer to the ideal or to G od as some say, or to reason, justice, and
true liberty as others have it, than the masses of people, and therefore have
the holy and noble mission of governing them. Sacrificing their own inter
ests and neglecting their own affairs, they are to devote themselves to the
happiness of their lesser brethrenthe people. Government to them is no
pleasure, it is a painful duty. T hey do not seek to gratify their own ambi
tions, vanity, or personal cupidity, but only the occasion to sacrifice them-
 IJ2 T H E P O L I T I C A L P H I L O S O P H Y OF B A K U N I N
selves for the common weal. And that no doubt is w h y the number of
people competing for public offices is so small and w hy kings, ministers,
and large and small officeholders accept power only with reluctant hearts.
T o Exploit and to Govern Mean One and the Same Thing. Such
are, in a society conceived according to the theory of the metaphysicians,
the two different and even opposed kinds of relations which may exist
among individuals. The first are those of exploitation, and the second are
those of government. If it is true that to govern means to sacrifice oneself
for the good o f the governed, this second relation contradicts in fact the
firstthe one of exploitation.
But let us look more closely into the matter. According to the idealistic
theorytheological or metaphysicalthose words, the good of the masses
do not signify their earthly well-being, nor their temporal happiness. W hat
do several decades of earthly life amount to in comparison with eternity!
Therefore the masses should be governed not with a view to the crass hap
piness afforded by material blessings upon the earth, but with a view to
their eternal salvation. T o complain of material privations and sufferings
can even be regarded as a lack o f education, once it is proven that a surfeit
of material enjoyment blights the immortal soul. But then the contradiction
disappears: to exploit and to govern mean the same thing, one completing
the other and in the long run serving as its means and end.
Exploitation and Government. Exploitation and Government are two
inseparable expressions o f that which is called politics, the first furnishing
the means with which the process of governing is carried on, and also con
stituting the necessary base as well as the goal o f all government, which in
turn guarantees and legalizes the power to exploit. From the beginning of
history both have constituted the real life of all States: theocratic, monar
chic, aristocratic, and even democratic States. Prior to the Great Revolu
tion toward the end o f the eighteenth century, the intimate bond between
exploitation and government was disguised by religious, loyalist, knightly
fictions; but ever since the brutal hand of the bourgeoisie has tom off these
rather transparent veils, ever since the revolutionary whirlwind scattered
all the vain fancies behind which the Church, the State, the theocracy,
monarchy, and aristocracy were carrying on serenely and for such a long
time their historic abominations; ever since the bourgeoisie, tired of being
the anvil, in turn became the hammer, and inaugurated the modem State,
this inevitable bond has revealed itself as a naked and incontestable truth.1
[This bond is fully revealed in the ethics o f the bourgeois society in
which mans morality is determined] by his ability to acquire property
when he is bom poor, or to preserve and augment it if he is lucky enough
to have come into wealth by inheritance.
T he Criterion of Bourgeois Morality. Morality has for its basis the
family. But the family has property for its basis and condition of real exist
ence. It follows that property had to be considered as the condition and
133 Ethics: Exploitation of the Masses
the proof o f the moral value of man. A n intelligent, energetic, and honest
individual will never fail to acquire this property, which is the necessary
social condition of respectability on the part of man and citizen, the mani
festation of his manly power, the visible sign of his capacities as well as o f
his honest dispositions and intentions. The barring o f non-acquisitive abili
ties [from directing social life] is then not only a fact but in principle it
is even a perfectly legitimate measure. It is a stimulus for honest and cap
able individuals and a just punishment for those who, being capable of
acquiring property, neglect or disdain doing it.
This negligence, this disdain, can have for its source only laziness, lax
ness, inconsistency of mind or character. Those are quite dangerous indi
viduals: the greater their abilities, the more are they to be condemned and
the more severely are they to be punished. For they carry disorganization
and demoralization into society. (Pilate did wrong in hanging Jesus Christ
for his religious and political opinions; he should have thrown him into
prison as a sluggard and a vagabond.2)
Bourgeois Morality and the Gospels. Therein lies the deepest essence
of the bourgeois conscience, o f all bourgeois morality. There is no need to
point out here the extent to which this morality contradicts the basic prin
ciples of Christianity, which, scorning the blessings of this world, (it is the
Gospels that are emphatic in scorning the good things o f this world, while
the preachers of the Gospels are far from disdaining them) forbids the
amassing o f earthly treasures, because, as it says, where thy treasure is
there will thy heart be also ; it is the Gospels that bid us to imitate the birds
of Heaven, which neither labor nor sow, but which live just the same.
1 have always admired the marvelous ability of the Protestants to read
the words o f the Gospels in their own construction, to transact their busi
ness, and at the same time to regard themselves as sincere Christians. W e will
let that go, however. But examine carefully in all their minute details the
bourgeois social relations, social and private, the speeches and acts of the
bourgeoisie of all countriesand you will find in all of them the deeply
implanted naive and basic conviction that an honest man, a moral man, is
he who knows how to acquire, conserve, and augment property, and that
a property-owner is the only one worthy of respect.
In England tw o prerequisites are attached to the right to be called a
gentleman: he must go to church, but most of all he must own property.
And the English language has a very forceful, picturesque, and naive ex
pression: That man is worth so muchThat is to say, five, ten, or perhaps
a hundred thousand pounds sterling. W hat the British (and the Americans)
say in their grossly naive manner, the bourgeoisie all over the world have in
their thoughts. And the vast majority of the bourgeoisiein Europe, Amer
ica, Australia, in all the European colonies scattered throughout the world,
is so convinced o f this basic view that it never even suspects the deep
immorality and inhumanity of such ideas.
 134 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
T h e Collective Depravity of the Bourgeoisie. The only thing that
speaks in favor of the bourgeoisie is the very naiveti of this depravity. It
is a collective depravity imposed as an absolute moral law upon ail the indi
viduals belonging to that class, which comprises: priests, the nobility, func
tionaries, military and civil officers, the Bohemian world of artists and
writers, industrialists and salesmen, and even workers who strive to become
bourgeois-all those who, in a word, want to succeed individually, and
who, tired of being an anvil like the great majority of people, want to be
come in turn a hammereverybody, with the exception of the proletariat.
This thought, being universal in its scope, is the great immoral force
underlying all the political and social acts of the bourgeoisie, and being
the more mischievous and pernicious in its effects because it is regarded as
the basis and measure of ail morality. This circumstance extenuates, ex
plains, and to some extent legitimizes the fury displayed b y the bourgeoisie
and the atrocious crimes committed b y it against the proletariat in June,
1848. There is no doubt that the bourgeoisie would have shown itself no
less furious if in defending property privileges against the Socialist workers,
it believed that it was only acting in defense of its own interests, but [in
that event] it would not have found within itself the energy, the implacable
passion, and the unanimity of rage which was instrumental in bringing
about its victory in 1848.
The bourgeoisie found this power within itself because it was deeply
convinced that in defending its own interests it was at the same time de
fending the sacred foundations of morality; because very seriously, much
more seriously than they themselves realize, Property is their God, their
only God, which long ago replaced in their hearts the heavenly God of
the Christians. And, like the latter in the days of yore, the bourgeois are
capable of suffering martyrdom and death for the sake of this God. The
ruthless and desperate war which they wage for the defense of property is
not only a war of interests: it is a religious war in the full meaning of the
word. And the fu ry and atrocity of which religious wars are capable are
well known to any student of history.
T h e Theology and Metaphysics of the Religion of Property. Property
is a god. This god already has its theology (called State Politics and Juridi
cal Right) and also its morality, the most adequate expression of which is
summed up in the phrase: That man is worth so much.
Propertythe godalso has its metaphysics. It is the science of the
bourgeois economists. Like any metaphysics it is a sort of twilight, a com
promise between truth and falsehood, with the latter benefiting by it. It
seeks to give falsehood the appearance of truth and leads truth to falsehood.
Political economy seeks to sanctify property by labor and to represent it
as the realization, the fruit, of labor. If it succeeds in doing this, it will save
property and the bourgeois world. For labor is sacred, and whatever is
based upon labor is good, just, moral, human, legitimate.
135 Ethics: Exploitation of the Masses
Ones faith, however, must be of a sturdy kind to enable him to swallow
this doctrine, for we see the vast majority of workers deprived of all prop
erty. And what is more, we know from the avowal of the economists and
their own scientific proofs, that in the present economic organization, which
they defend so passionately, the masses will never come to own property;
and that, consequently, their labor does not emancipate and ennoble them,
for, notwithstanding all their labor, they are condemned to remain eter
nally without propertythat is, outside of morality and humanity. On the
other hand, we see that the richest property owners, and consequently the
most worthy, humane, moral, and respectable citizens, are precisely those
who w ork the least or who do not work at all.
The reply to this is that now it is impossible to remain rich, to preserve
and even less soto increase ones wealth, without working. Then let us
agree upon the proper use of the word work : there is work and work.
There is productive labor and there is the labor of exploitation. The first is
the labor of the proletariat; the second, that of property-owners. The one
who turns to good account the lands cultivated by someone else, simply
exploits the labor of someone else. The one who increases the value o f his
capital, whether in industry or in commerce, exploits some one elses labor.
The banks which grow rich as a result o f thousands of credit transactions,
the Stock Exchange speculators, the share-holders who get large dividends
without doing a stitch o f work; Napoleon III, who became so rich that
he was able to raise to wealth all his proteges; King Wilhelm I, who, proud
of his victories, is already preparing to levy billions upon poor France, and
who already has become rich and is enriching his soldiers with his plunder
all these people are workers, but what kind of workers! H ighway rob
bers! Thieves and ordinary robbers are workers to a much greater extent,
for, in order to get rich in their own way, they w ork with their own
hands.
It is evident to anyone who does not want to be blind that productive
work creates wealth and yields to the producer only poverty, and that it
is only non-productive, exploiting labor, that yields property. But since
property is morality it follows that morality, as the bourgeois understands
it, consists in exploiting someone else's labor.*
Exploitation and Government Are the Faithful Expression of Meta
physical Idealism. Exploitation is the visible body, and government is the
soul of the bourgeois regime. And as we have just seen, both o f them in
this intimate bond are, from the theoretical and practical point of view, the
necessary and faithful expression of metaphysical idealism, the inevitable
consequence of this bourgeois doctrine which seeks the liberty and morality
o f individuals outside of social solidarity. This doctrine has as its aim an
exploiting government by a small number o f fortunate and elect people, an
exploited slavery of a great number, and for allthe negation o f any mo
rality and any liberty whatever.4
 1 36 TH E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

c h a p t e r .4 Ethics: Morality o f the State

T h e Theory of Social Contract. Man is not only the most individual

being on earthhe is also the most social being. It was a great fallacy on
the part of Jean Jacques Rousseau to have assumed that primitive society
was established by a free contract entered into b y savages. But Rousseau
was not the only one to uphold such views* The majority o f jurists and
modem writers, whether of the Kantian school or of other individualist
and liberal schools, who do not accept the theological idea of society being
founded upon divine right, nor that o f the Hegelian schoolo f society as
the more or less mystic realization o f objective morality nor the primitive
animal society o f the naturalist schooltake nolens volens, for lack o f any
other foundation, the tacit contract, as their point of departure.
A tacit contract! That is to say, a wordless, and consequently a thought
less and will-less contract: a revolting nonsense! A n absurd fiction, and
what is more, a wicked fiction! A n unworthy hoax! For it assumes that
while 1 was in a state of not being able to will, to think, to speak, I bound
myself and all my descendantsonly b y virtue o f having let myself be
victimized without raising any protestinto perpetual slavery.1
Lack of Moral Discernment in the State Preceding the Original Social
Contract. From the point of view of the system which we are now exam
ining the distinction between good and bad did not exist prior to the con
clusion of the social contract. A t that time every individual remained
isolated in his liberty or in his absolute right, paying no attention to the
freedom of others except in those cases wherein such attention was dic
tated b y his weakness or his relative strengthin other words, by his own
prudence and interest. A t that time egoism, according to the same theory,
was the supreme law, the only extant right. The good was determined by
success, the bad only b y failure, and justice was simply the consecration of
the accomplished fact, however horrible, cruel, or infamous it might be
as is the rale in the political morality which now prevails in Europe.
The Social Contract as the Criterion of Good and Bad. The distinction
between good and bad, according to this system, began only with the con
clusion of the social contract. A ll that which had been recognized as con
stituting the general interest was declared to be the good, and everything
contrary to it, the bad. Members of society who entered into this compact,
having become citizens, having bound themselves by solemn obligations,
assumed thereby the duty o f subordinating their private interests to the
common weal, to the inseparable interest o f all. They also divorced their
individual rights from public rights, the only representative o f whichthe
Statewas thereby invested with the power to suppress all the revolts o f
137 Ethics: Morality of the State
individual egoism, having, however, the duty of protecting every one of
its members in the exercise of his rights in so far as they did not run counter
to the general rights o f the community.
Th e State Formed by the Social Contract Is the Modern Atheistic State.
N ow we are going to examine the nature of the relations which the State,
thus constituted, is bound to enter into with other similar States, and also
its relations to the population which it governs. Such an analysis appears to
us to be the more interesting and useful inasmuch as the State, as defined
here, is precisely the modem State in so far as it is divorced from the re
ligious idea: it is the lay State or the atheist State proclaimed by modern
writers.
Let us then see wherein this morality consists. The modem State, as we
have said, has freed itself from the yoke of the Church and consequently
has shaken off the yoke of universal or cosmopolitan morality of the Chris
tian religion, but it has not yet become permeated with the humanitarian
idea or ethicswhich it cannot do without destroying itself, for in its
detached existence and isolated concentration the State is much too narrow
to embrace, to contain the interests and consequently the morality of,
humanity as a whole.
Ethics Identified with State Interests. Modem States have arrived pre
cisely at that point. Christianity serves them only as a pretext and a phrase,
only as a means to fool the simpletons, for the aims pursued by them have
nothing in common with religious goals. And the eminent statesmen o f our
timesthe Palmerstons, the Muravievs, the Cavours, the Bismarcks, the
Napoleons, would laugh a great deal if their openly professed religious con
victions were taken seriously. T h ey would laugh even more if anyone
attributed to them humanitarian sentiments, considerations, and intentions,
which they have always treated publicly as mere silliness. Then what con
stitutes their morality? O nly State interests. From this point o f view, which,
with very few exceptions, has been the point of view o f statesmen, of
strong men of all times and all countries, all that is instrumental in conserv
ing, exalting, and consolidating the power of the State is goodsacrilegious
though it might be from a religious point of view and revolting as it might
appear from the point o f view of human moralityand vice versa, whatever
militates against the interests o f the State is bad, even if it be in other
respects the most holy and humanely just thing. Such is the true morality
and secular practice o f all States.
T h e Collective Egoism of Particular Associations Raised into Ethical
Categories. Such also is the morality o f the State founded upon the theory
o f social contract. According to this system, the good and the just, since
they begin only with the social contract, are in fact nothing but the content
and the end-purpose o f the contractthat is to say, the common interest
and the public right of all individuals who formed this contract, with the
exception of those who remained outside of it. Consequently, by good in
 138 T H E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

this system is meant only the greatest satisfaction given to the collective
egoism o f a particular and limited association, which, being founded upon
the partial sacrifice of the individual egoism of every one o f its members,
excludes from its midst, as strangers and natural enemies, the vast majority
o f the human species whether or not it is formed into similar associations.
Morality Is Co-Extensive Only W ith the Boundaries of Particular States.
The existence o f a single limited State necessarily presupposes the existence,
and if necessary provokes the formation, of several States, it being quite
natural that the individuals who find themselves outside of this State and
who are menaced by it in their existence and liberty, should in turn league
themselves against it. Here then w e have humanity broken up into an in
definite number of States which are foreign, hostile, and menacing toward
one another.
There is no common right, and no social contract among them, for if
such a contract and right existed, the various States would cease to be abso
lutely independent of one another, becoming federated members o f one
great State. Unless this great State embraces humanity as a whole, it will
necessarily have against it the hostility of other great States, federated
internally. Thus war would always be the supreme law and the inherent
necessity o f the very existence of humanity.
Jungle Law Governs Interrelations of States. Every State, whether it
is of a federative or a non-federative character, must seek, under the penalty
of utter ruin, to become the most powerful of States. It has to devour others
in order not to be devoured in turn, to conquer in order not to be con
quered, to enslave in order not to be enslavedfor two similar and at the
same rime alien powers, cannot co-exist without destroying each other.
T h e Universal Solidarity of Humanity Disrupted by the State. The
State then is the most flagrant negation, the most cynical and complete
negation of humanity. It rends apart the universal solidarity o f all men
upon earth, and it unites some of them only in order to destroy, conquer,
and enslave all the rest. It takes under its protection only its own citizens,
and it recognizes human right, humanity, and civilization only within the
confines of its own boundaries. And since it does not recognize any right
outside o f its own confines, it quite logically arrogates to itself the right
to treat with the most ferocious inhumanity all the foreign populations
whom it can pillage, exterminate, or subordinate to its will. If it displays
generosity or humanity toward them, it does it in no case out o f any sense
of duty: and that is because it has no duty but to itself, and toward those
o f its members who formed it by an act of free agreement, who continue
constituting it on the same free basis, or, as it happens in the long run, have
become its subjects.
Since international law does not exist, and since it never can exist in a
serious and real manner without undermining the very foundations of the
principle of absolute State sovereignty, the State cannot have any duties
*39 Ethics: Morality of the State
toward foreign populations. If then it treats humanely a conquered people,
if it does not go to the full length in pillaging and exterminating it, and does
not reduce it to the last degree of slavery, it does so perhaps because o f con
siderations of political expediency and prudence, or even because of pure
magnanimity, but never because of dutyfor it has an absolute right to
dispose of them in any w ay it deems fit.
Patriotism Runs Counter to Ordinary Human Morality. This fiagrant
negation of humanity, which constitutes the very essence o f the State, is
from the point o f view o f the latter the supreme duty and the greatest
virtue: it is called patriotism and it constitutes the transcendent morality o f
the State. W e call it the transcendent morality because ordinarily it tran
scends the level of human morality and justice, whether private or common,
and thereby it often sets itself in sharp contradiction to them. Thus, for
instance, to offend, oppress, rob, plunder, assassinate, or enslave ones fellow-
man is, to the ordinary morality o f man, to commit a serious crime.
In public life, on the contrary, from the point of view of patriotism,
when it is done for the greater glory o f the State in order to conserve or to
enlarge its power, all that becomes a duty and a virtue. And this duty, this
virtue, are obligatory upon every patriotic citizen. Everyone is expected to
discharge those duties not only in respect to strangers but in respect to his
fellow-citizens, members and subjects of the same State, whenever the
welfare of the State demands it from him.2
T h e Supreme Law of the State. The supreme law of the State is self-
preservation at any cost. And since all States, ever since they came to exist
upon the earth, have been condemned to perpetual strugglea struggle
against their own populations, whom they oppress and ruin, a struggle
against all foreign States, every one of which can be strong only if the
others are weakand since the States cannot hold their own in this struggle
unless they constantly keep on augmenting their power against their own
subjects as well as against the neighbor Statesit follows that the supreme
law of the State is the augmentation o f its power to the detriment of
internal liberty and external justice.8
T h e State Aims to T ake the Place of Humanity. Such is in its stark
reality the sole morality, the sole aim of the State. It worships God himself
only because he is its own exclusive God, the sanction o f its power and of
that which it calls its right, that is, the right to exist at any cost and always
to expand at the cost o f other States. Whatever serves to promote this end
is worth while, legitimate, and virtuous. Whatever harms it is criminal. The
morality of the State then is the reversal o f human justice and human
morality.
This transcendent, super-human, and therefore anti-human morality of
States is not only the result of the corruption of men who are charged with
carrying on State functions. One might say with greater right that corrup
tion of men is the natural and necessary sequel of the State institution. This
 I40 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

morality is only the development of the fundamental principle of the State,

the inevitable expression of its inherent necessity. The State is nothing else
but the negation of humanity; it is a limited collectivity which aims to
take the place o f humanity and which wants to impose itself upon the
latter as a supreme goal, while everything else is to submit and minister to it.
T h e Idea of Humanity, Absent in Ancient Times, Has Become a
Power in Our Present Life. That was natural and easily understood in an
cient times when the very idea o f humanity was unknown, and when every
people worshiped its exclusively national gods, who gave it the right of life
and death over all other nations. Human right existed only in relation to
the citizens of the State. W hatever remained outside of the State was
doomed to pillage, massacre, and slavery.
N ow things have changed. The idea of humanity becomes more and
more of a power in the civilized world, and, owing to the expansion and
increasing speed of means o f communication, and also owing to the influ
ence, still more material than moral, o f civilization upon barbarous peoples,
this idea of humanity begins to take hold even of the minds of uncivilized
nations. This idea is the invisible power of our century, with which the
present powersthe Statesmust reckon. T h ey cannot submit to it o f their
own free will because such submission on their part would be equivalent
to suicide, since the triumph of humanity can be realized only through the
destruction of the States. But the States can no longer deny this idea nor
openly rebel against it, for having now grown too strong, it may finally
destroy them.
T h e State Has to Recognize in Its Own Hypocritical Manner the
Powerful Sentiment of Humanity. In the face of this painful alternative
there remains only one way out: and that is hypocrisy. The States pay
their outward respects to this idea of humanity; they speak and apparently
act only in the name of it, but they violate it every day. This, however,
should not be held against the States. They cannot act otherwise, their posi
tion having become such that they can hold their own only by lying.
Diplomacy has no other mission.
Therefore what do we see? Every time a State wants to declare war
upon another State, it starts off b y launching a manifesto addressed not
only to its own subjects but to the whole world. In this manifesto it de
clares that right and justice are on its side, and it endeavors to prove that
it is actuated only by love of peace and humanity and that, imbued with
generous and peaceful sentiments, it suffered for a long time in silence until
the mounting iniquity of its enemy forced it to bare its sword. A t the same
time it vows that, disdainful of all material conquest and not seeking any
increase in territory, it will put an end to this war as soon as justice is re
established. And its antagonist answers with a similar manifesto, in which
naturally right, justice, humanity, and all the generous sentiments are to
be found respectively on its side.
141 Ethics: Morality o f the State
Those mutually opposed manifestoes are written with the same elo
quence, they breathe the same virtuous indignation, and one is just as
sincere as the other; that is to say, both of them are equally brazen in their
lies, and it is only fools who are deceived by them. Sensible persons, all
those who have had some political experience, do not even take the trouble
of reading such manifestoes. On the contrary, they seek to uncover the
interests driving both adversaries into this war, and to weigh the respective
power o f each of them in order to guess the outcome of the struggle. W hich
only goes to prove that moral issues are not at stake in such wars.
Perpetual W ar Is the Price of the States Existence. The rights o f
peoples, as well as the treaties regulating the relations o f States, lack any
moral sanction. In every definite historic epoch they are the material ex
pression o f the equilibrium resulting from the mutual antagonism of States.
So long as States exist, there will be no peace. There will be only more or
less prolonged respites, armistices concluded by the perpetually belligerent
States; but as soon as a State feels sufficiently strong to destroy this equi
librium to its advantage, it will never fail to do so. The history of humanity
fully bears out this point.4
Crimes Are the Moral Climate of the States. This explains to us w hy
ever since history began, that is, ever since States came into existence, the
political world has always been and still continues to be the stage for high
knavery and unsurpassed brigandage-brigandage and knavery which are
held in high honor, since they are ordained by patriotism, transcendent
morality, and by the supreme interest of the State. This explains to us w hy
all the history o f ancient and modem States is nothing more than a series
of revolting crimes; w hy present and past kings and ministers o f all times
and of all countriesstatesmen, diplomats, bureaucrats, and warriorsif
judged from the point of view o f simple morality and human justice, de
serve a thousand times the gallows or penal servitude.
For there is no terror, cruelty, sacrilege, perjury, imposture, infamous
transaction, cynical theft, brazen robbery, or foul treason which has not
been committed and all are still being committed daily b y representatives
of the State, with no other excuse than this elastic, at times so convenient
and terrible phrase reason of State. A terrible phrase indeed! For it has
corrupted and dishonored more people in official circles and in the gov
erning classes of society than Christianity itself. As soon as it is uttered
everything becomes silent and drops out of sight: honesty, honor, justice,
right, pity itself vanishes and with it logic and sound sense; black becomes
white and white becomes black, the horrible becomes humane, and the
most dastardly felonies and most atrocious crimes become meritorious acts.6
Crirae-the Privilege of the State. W hat is permitted to the State is
forbidden to the individual. Such is the maxim of all governments. Machia-
velli said it, and history as well as the practice of all contemporary govern
ments bear him out on that point. Crime is the necessary condition of the
 I42 TH E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
very existence of the State, and it therefore constitutes its exclusive monop
oly, from which it follows that the individual who dares commit a crime is
guilty in a two-fold sense: first, he is guilty against human conscience, and,
above all, he is guilty against the State in arrogating to himself one of its
most precious privileges.6
State Morality According to Machiavelli. The great Italian political
philosopher, Machiavelli, was the first who gave currency to this phrase
(reason of State), or at least he gave it its true meaning and the immense
popularity which it has enjoyed ever since in governmental circles. Realistic
and positive thinker that he was, he came to understandand he was the
first one in this respectthat the great and powerful States could be
founded and maintained only b y crimeby many great crimesand by a
thorough contempt for anything called honesty.
He wrote, explained, and argued his case with terrible frankness. And
since the idea of humanity was wholly ignored in his time; since the idea
of fraternitynot human, but religiouspreached b y the Catholic Church
had been, as it always is, nothing but a ghastly irony belled at every instant
by the acts o f the Church itself; since in his time no one believed that there
was such a thing as popular rightsthe people having been considered an
inert and inept mass, a sort of cannon-fodder for the State, to be taxed,
impressed into forced labor and kept in a state of eternal obedience,in
view of all this Machiavelli arrived quite logically at the idea that the State
was the supreme goal of human existence, that it had to be served at any
cost, and that since the interest of the State stood above everything else, a
good patriot should not recoil from any crime in order to serve the State.
Machiavelli counsels recourse to crime, urges it, and makes it the sine
qua non of political intelligence as well as of true patriotism. Whether the
State is called monarchy or republic, crime will always be necessary to
maintain and assure its triumph. This crime will no doubt change its direc
tion and object, but its nature will remain the same. It will always be the
forced and abiding violation of justice and o f honestyfor the good of the
State.
Wherein Machiavelli Was Wrong. Yes, Machiavelli was right: we can
not doubt it now that we have the experience of three and a half centuries
added to his own experience. Yes, History tells us that while small States are
virtuous because of their feebleness, powerful States sustain themselves only
through crime. But our conclusion will differ radically from that of Machia-
velli, and the reason thereof is quite simple: we are the sons o f the Revolu
tion and we have inherited from it the Religion of Humanity which we
have to found upon the ruins of the Religion of Divinity. W e believe in
the rights of man, in the dignity and necessary emancipation of the human
species. W e believe in human liberty and human fraternity based upon
human justice.7
Patriotism Deciphered. W e have already seen that b y excluding the
 143 Ethics: Morality of the State
vast majority of humanity from its midst, b y placing it outside of the obli
gations and reciprocal duties of morality, of justice, and of right, the State
denies humanity with this high-sounding word, Patriotism, and imposes
injustice and cruelty upon all of its subjects as their supreme duty.8
Mans Original Wickednessthe Theoretical Premise of the State.
Every State, like every theology, assumes that man is essentially wicked and
bad. In the State which we are going to examine now, the good, as we have
already seen, begins with the conclusion of the social contract, and there
fore is only the product of this contractits very content. It is not the
product of liberty. On the contrary, so long as men remain isolated in their
absolute individuality, enjoying all their natural liberty, recognizing no
limits to this liberty but those imposed by fact and not by right, they fol
low only one lawthe law of natural egoism.
T h ey insult, maltreat, rob, murder, and devour one another, everyone
according to the measure of his intelligence, of his cunning, and of his
material forces, as is now being done by the States. Hence human liberty
produces not good but evil, man being bad b y nature. H ow did he become
bad? That is for theology to explain. The fact is that the State, when it
came into existence, found man already in that state and it set for itself the
task o f making him good; that is to say, of transforming the natural man
into a citizen.
One might say to this that inasmuch as the State is the product of a
contract freely concluded by men and since good is the product o f the
State, it follows that it is the product of liberty. This, however, would be
an utterly wrong conclusion. The State, even according to this theory, is
not the product of liberty, but, on the contrary, the product of the vol
untary negation and sacrifice o f liberty. Natural men, absolutely free from
the point o f view o f right, but in fact exposed to all the dangers which at
every instant of their lives menace their security, in order to assure and
safeguard the latter sacrifice, abdicate a greater or lesser portion of their
liberty, and inasmuch as they sacrifice it for the sake of their security, in so
far as they become citizens, they also become the slaves of the State. There
fore we have the right to affirm that from the point of view of the State the
good arises not from liberty, but, on the contrary, from the negation of
liberty.
Theology and Politics. Is it not remarkable, this similitude between
theology (the science of the Church) and politics (the theory of the State),
this convergence of two apparently contrary orders of thoughts and facts
upon one and the same conviction: that of the necessity of sacrificing hu
man liberty in order to make men into moral beings and transform them
into saints, according to some, and virtuous citizens, according to others?
As for us, we are hardly surprised at it, for we are convinced that politics
and theology are both closely related, stemming from the same origin and
pursuing the same aim under two different names; we are convinced that
 I44 TH E PO LIT IC A L PH ILO SO PH Y OF B A K U N IN
every State is a terrestrial Church, just as every Church with its Heaven
the abode of the blessed and the immortal godsis nothing but a celestial
State.
T h e Similarity of the Ethical Premises of Theology and Politics. The
State then, like the Church, starts with this fundamental assumption that all
men are essentially bad and that when left to their natural liberty they will
tear one another apart and will offer the spectacle of the most frightful
anarchy wherein the strongest will kill or exploit the weaker ones. And is
not this just the contrary of what is now taking place in our exemplary
States?
Likewise the State posits as a principle the following tenet: In order to
establish public order it is necessary to have a superior authority; in order
to guide men and repress their wicked passions, it is necessary to have a
leader, and also to impose a curb upon the people, but this authority must
be vested in a man of virtuous genius,* a legislator for his people, like
Moses, Lycurgus, or Solonand that leader and that curb will embody the
wisdom and the repressive power of the State.
Society not a Product of a Contract. The State is a transitory historic
form, a passing form of societylike the Church, o f which it is a younger
brotherbut it lacks the necessary and immutable character of society which
is anterior to all development of humanity and which, partaking fully of the
almighty power of natural laws, acts, and manifestations, constitutes the
very basis of human existence. Man is born into society just as an ant is
bom into its ant-hill or a bee into its hive; man is bom into society from
the very moment that he takes his first step toward humanity, from the
moment that he becomes a human being, that is, a being possessing to a
greater or lesser extent the power of thought and speech. Man does not
choose society; on the contrary, he is the product of the latter, and he is
just as inevitably subject to the natural laws governing his essential develop-
ent as to all the other natural laws which he must obey.
Revolt Against Society Inconceivable. Society antedates and at the
same time survives every human individual, being in this respect like Nature
itself. It is eternal like Nature, or rather, having been bom upon our earth,
it will last as long as the earth. A radical revolt against society would there
fore be just as impossible for man as a revolt against Nature, human society
being nothing else but the last great manifestation or creation of Nature
upon this earth. And an individual who would want to rebel against society
that is, against Nature in general and his own nature in particularwould
place himself beyond the pale of real existence, would plunge into nothing
ness, into an absolute void, into lifeless abstraction, into God.
So it follows that it is just as impossible to ask whether society is good
or evil as it is to ask whether Naturethe universal, material, real, absolute.

The ideal of Mazzini. (Bakunins footnote.)

 145 Ethics: Morality of the State
sole, and supreme beingis good or evil It is much more than that: it is
an immense, positive, and primitive fact, having had existence prior to all
consciousness, to all ideas, to all intellectual and moral discernment; if is
the very basis, it is the world in which, inevitably and at a much later stage,
there began to develop that which we call good and evil
T h e State a Historically Necessary Evil. It hi not so with the State.
And I do not hesitate to say that the State is an evil but a historically nec
essary evil, as necessary in the past as its complete extinction will be neces
sary sooner or later, just as necessary as primitive bestiality and theological
divagations were necessary in the past. The State is not society; it is only
one o f its historical forms, as brutal as it is abstract in character. Histori
cally, it arose in all countries out of the marriage of violence, rapine, and
pillagein a word, of war and conquestwith the Gods created in suc
cession b y the theological fancies o f the nations. From its very beginning
it has beenand still remainsthe divine sanction of brutal force and tri
umphant iniquity. Even in the most democratic countries, like the United
States of America and Switzerland, it is simply the consecration o f the
privileges of some minority and the actual enslavement of the vast majority.
Revolt Against the State. Revolt against the State is much easier because
there is something in the nature of the State which provokes rebellion. The
State is authority, it is force, it is the ostentatious display of and infatuation
with power. It does not seek to ingratiate itself, to win over, to convert
Every time it intervenes, it does so with particularly bad grace. For by its
very nature it cannot persuade but must impose and exert force. However
hard it may try to disguise this nature, it will still remain the legal violator
of mans will and the permanent denial of his liberty.
Morality Presupposes Freedom. And even when the State enjoins
something good, it undoes and spoils it precisely because the latter comes
in the form of a command, and because every command provokes and
arouses the legitimate revolt o f freedom; and also because, from the point
of view of true morality, o f human and not divine morality, the good which
is done b y command from above ceases to be good and thereby becomes
evil Liberty, morality, and the humane dignity of man consist precisely in
that man does good not because he is ordered to do so, but because he
conceives it, wants it, and loves it.10
 14 6 THE P O L IT IC A L PH ILO SO PH Y OF B A K U N IN

c h a p t e r 15 Ethics: Evilly H utticiti

or Anarchist Morality

Socialism and Materialism Lead to a T ru ly Human Morality. Having

shown how idealism, starting with the absurd ideas of God, immortality of
the soul, the original freedom o f individuals, and their morality independent
of society, inevitably arrives at the consecration of slavery and immorality,
I now have to show how real science, materialism and socialismthe second
term being but the true and complete development of the first, precisely
because they take as their starting point the material nature and the natural
and primitive slavery of men, and because they bind themselves to seek the
emancipation of men not outside but within society, not against it but by
means of itare bound to end in the establishment of the greatest freedom
of individuals and the highest human morality.1
T h e Instinct for Individual Self-Preservation and for Preservation of
Species. The elements of what we call morality are already found in the
animal world. In all the animal species, with no exception, but with a great
difference in development, we find two opposed instincts: the instinct for
preservation o f the individual and the instinct for preservation of the
species*, or, speaking in human terms, the egoistic and the social instincts.
From the point of view of science, as well as from the point o f view o f
Nature itself, those two instincts are equally natural and hence equally
legitimate, and, what is even more important, they are equally necessary in
the natural economy o f beings. The individual instinct is in itself the basic
condition for the preservation o f the species, for if the individuals did not
defend themselves with all their power against all the privations and against
all the external pressures constantly menacing their existence, the species
itself, which only lives in and through the individuals, would not be able
to maintain its existence. But if those two drives are to be judged only from
the absolute point of view of the exclusive interest of the species, one may
say that social instinct is good, and individual instinct, inasmuch as it is op
posed to it, is bad.
T h e Unbalanced Development of Those Instincts in the Animal World
and Among Higher Insects. W ith the ants and bees it is virtue that pre
dominates, for in both of them social instinct appears to over-ride individ
ual instinct. It is altogether different among wild beasts, and in general one
may say that in the animal world egoism is the predominant instinct. Here
the instinct of the species, on the contrary, awakens only during short
intervals and lasts only so long as it is necessary for the procreation and
education of the family.
 1 47 Ethics; Truly Human or Anarchist Morality
Egoism and Sociability Are Paramount in Man. It is altogether dif
ferent with man. It seems, and this has provided one of the pillars of his
great superiority over other animal species, that both these opposed instincts
egoism and sociabilityare much more powerful and much less distinct
from each other in man than among all the other animals. H e fa more
ferocious in his egoism than the wildest beasts and at the same time he fa
more sociable than ants and bees.2
Humanity Is Present Even in the Lowest Character. A ll human
morality, every collective and individual morality, rests basically upon hu
man respect. W hat do we mean b y human respect? It is recognition of
humanity, of human right and of human dignity in every man of whatever
race, color, and degree of intellectual and even moral development he may
be. But if a man is stupid, wicked, contemptible, can I respect him? If that
were the case, no doubt I would find it impossible to respect his villainy, his
stupidity, and brutality; they would make me feel disgusted and indignant;
and if necessary I would take most energetic measures against them, not
even stopping at killing such a man if no otjier means were left to defend
my life against him, my rights, or whatever I respect or is dear to me. But
in the midst of the most energetic and fierceand if necessary even mortal
struggle against him, I would have to respect his human nature.
Regeneration of Character Possible with Change of Social Conditions.
O nly at the price of showing such respect can I retain m y own human
dignity. But if he himself does not recognize this dignity in others, can we
recognize the same in himself? If he fa a kind of ferocious animal, or even
worse, as it sometimes happens, would it not be to indulge in fictions if we
acknowledged human nature in him? N o t at all! For whatever depths his
intellectual and moral degradation may reach at any particular moment,
unless he is congenitally insane or an idiotin which case he should be
treated not as a criminal but as a sick personand if he is in full possession
o f the sense and intelligence allotted to him b y Nature, then his human
character, amid the most monstrous deviations, still exists in him, in a very
real manner, as a possibility, always present with him so long as he lives,
that somehow he may become aware of his humanity if only a radical
change is effected in the social conditions which made him what he is.
Social Environment the Determining Factor. Take the most intelli
gent ape possessing the finest character, put it under the best, most humane
conditionsand you will never succeed in making a man out of it. Take
the most hardened criminal or a man of the poorest mind, and, provided
neither one o f them suffers from some organic lesion which may bring
about either idiocy or incurable madness of the otheryou will soon come
to recognize that if one has become a criminal and the other has not yet
developed to the conscious awareness of his humanity and human duties,
the fault lies not with them nor with their nature, but with the social
environment in which they were bom and have been developing.
 148 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
Free W ill Is Denied. Here we come to touch upon the most impor
tant point of the social question or the science of man in general. W e already
have declared repeatedly that we absolutely deny the existence of free will,
in the meaning given to it by theology, metaphysics, and jurisprudence;
that is, in the sense of a spontaneous self-determination of the individual
will o f man, independent o f all natural and social influences.
Intellectual and Moral Capacities Are the Expression o Bodily Struc
ture. W e deny the existence of a soul, of a moral entity having existence
separate from the body. On the contrary, we affirm that jttst as the body of
the individual, with all of its instinctive faculties and predispositions, is
nothing but the result of all the general and particular causes that have
determined its particular organization, so, what we improperly call the
soulhis intellectual and moral capacitiesis the direct product or rather
the natural immediate expression of this very organization, and especially
of the degree of organic development reached by the brain as a result o f
the concurrence o f the totality o f causes independent of his will.
Individuality Fully Determined by the Sum T o tal of Preceding Causes.
Every individual, even the most insignificant one, is the product o f cen
turies of development: the history o f causes working toward the formation
o f such an individual has no beginning. If we possessed the gift, which no
one ever has had and no one ever will have, o f apprehending and embracing
the infinite diversity of transformations o f matter or of being that have
inevitably succeeded one another from the emergence of our terrestrial
globe until the birth of this particular individual, we might be able to say
with mathematical precision, without ever knowing that individual, what
his organic nature is, and to determine to the minutest detail the measure
and character of his intellectual and moral facultiesin a word, his soul, as
it was in the first hour of his birth.
W e have no possibility o f analyzing and embracing all these successive
transformations, but we can say without fear o f being mistaken that every
human individual from the moment of his birth is entirely the product
of historic development, that is, of the physiological and social development
o f his race, of his people, of his caste {if there are castes in his country),
o f his family, his ancestors, and the individual natures o f his father and
mother, who have directly transmitted to him by way of physiological
heritage, as the natural point o f departure for him, and as the determination
of his individual nature, all the inevitable consequences of their own previ
ous existence, material as well as moral, individual as well as social, includ
ing their thoughts, their feelings, and their acts, including the various vicis
situdes of their lives, and the great or small events in which they took
part, and likewise including the immense diversity o f accidents to which
they were subject, along with alt that they themselves had inherited in the
same way from their own parents.
Differences Are Determined. There is no need to mention again
 1 49 Ethics; Truly Human or Anarchist Morality
(for no one disputes it), that differences among races, peoples, and even
among classes and families, are determined by geographic, ethnographic,
physiological, and economic causes (the economic cause comprises two
important points: the question of occupationthe collective division o f
labor in society and the distribution of wealthand the question of nour
ishment, in respect to quantity as well as quality), and also historic, reli
gious, philosophic, juridical, political, and social causes; and that all these
causes, combined in a manner differing for every race, every nation, and,
more often, for every province and every commune, for every class and
every family, impart to everyone his or her own specific physiognomy;
that is, a different physiological type, a sum of particular predispositions
and capacitiesindependently of the will of the individuals, who are
made up of them and who are altogether their products.
Thus every human individual, at the moment of his birth, is the
material, organic derivative of all that infinite diversity of causes which
produced him in their combination. His sotHthat is, his organic predis
position toward the development of feelings, ideas, and willis nothing
but a product. It is completely determined by the individual physiological
quality of his neuro-cerebral system which, like the other parts of his
body, absolutely depends upon the more or less fortuitous combination o f
causes. It mainly constitutes what we call the particular, original nature of
the individual
Development Brings out the Implicit Individual Differences. There
are as many different natures as there are individuals. Individual differences
manifest themselves the clearer as they develop; or rather, they not only
manifest themselves with greater power, they actually become greater as
the individuals develop, for the external things and circumstances, the
thousand elusive causes that influence the development of individuals, are
in themselves extremely diverse in character. As a result, we find that the
farther an individual advances in life, the more his individual nature
becomes delineated, the more he stands out from other individuals b y
reason of his virtues as well as of his faults.
T he Uniqueness of the Individual. T o what point is the particular
nature or the soul of the individualthat is, the individual particularities
of the neuro-cerebral apparatusdeveloped in new-born infants? The
proper answer to this question can be given only by physiologists. W e
know only that all these particularities must necessarily be hereditary, in
the sense that we have tried to explain. That is, they are determined by an
infinity of the most diverse and most disparate causes: material and moral,
mechanical and physical, organic and spiritual, historical, geographical,
economic, and social, great and small, permanent and casual, immediate
and far removed in space and time, and the sum total of which is combined
in a single living being and is individualized, for the first and last time, in
the current of universal transformations, in this child only, who, in the
 150 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

individual acceptance of this wordy never had and never will have an exact
duplicate.
It remains now to find out to what point and in which sense this indi
vidual nature is really determined at the moment the child leaves its
mothers womb. Is that determination only material, or spiritual and moral
at the same time, at least in its tendency and natural capacity or its instinc
tive predisposition? Is the child born intelligent or foolish, good or bad,
endowed with will or deprived of it, predisposed to develop along the
lines of some particular talent? Can the child inherit the character, habits,
and defects, or the intellectual and moral qualities of its parents and
ancestors?
Are There Innate Moral Characteristics? W hat interests us above all
in this question is to know whether moral attributesgoodness or wicked
ness, courage or cowardice, strong or weak character, generosity or
avarice, egoism or love for ones fellowman, and other positive or negative
characteristics o f this kindwhether, like intellectual faculties, they can
be physiologically inherited from parents or ancestors; or again, whether
quite independently of all heredity, they can be formed by the effect o f
some accidental cause, known or unknown, working in the child while it
is still in its mothers womb? In a word, does the child, when it is bom,
bring into the world any moral predispositions?
T h e Idea of Innate Moral Propensities Leads to the Discredited
Phrenological Theory, W e do not think so. The better to deal with this
problem we shall first note here that, if we admitted the existence o f
innate moral qualities, we would have to assume that that they are inter
linked in the newborn infant with some physiological, w holly material
particularity of its own organism: upon coming out o f the womb of his
mother, the child has neither soul nor mind, nor feelings, nor even instincts;
it is born into all these. It is therefore only a physical being, and its
faculties and qualities, if it has them at all, are only anatomic or physio
logical.
Thus, for a child to be born good, generous, devoted, courageous, or
wicked, avaricious, egoistical, and cowardly, it would be necessary that
each one of those virtues or defects should correspond to the specific
material and, so to speak, local particularities o f his organism, and espe
cially of his brain. Such an assumption would lead us to the system o f
Gall, who believed that he had found, for every quality and every defect,
corresponding bumps and cavities upon the cranium. His theory, as we
know, has been unanimously rejected by modem physiologists.
T h e Logical Implications of the Idea of Innate Moral Propensities.
But if it were a well-grounded theory, what would be its implications?
Once w e assumed that defects and vices as well as good qualities are
innate, then w e would have to ascertain whether they could or could
not be overcome by education. In the first case, the responsibility for all
151 Ethics: Truly Human or Anarchist Morality
the crimes committed by men would fall back upon the society which
failed to give them a proper upbringing, and not upon the individuals
themselves, who, on the contrary, could be considered only as victims of
this lack of foresight on the part of society. In the second case, innate
predispositions being recognized as inevitable and incorrigible, no other
way would be left for society but to do away with all individuals who are
afflicted with some natural or innate vice. But in order not to fall into the
horrible vice o f hypocrisy, society should then recognize thereby that it
would be doing so solely in the interests of self-preservation, and not of
justice.
Only the Positive Has Real Existence. There is another consideration
which may help us to clarify this question: in the intellectual and moral
as well as in the physical world, only the positive has existence; the nega
tive does not exist, it does not constitute a being in itself, it is only a
more or less considerable diminution of the positive. Thus cold is not a
different property from heat; it is only a relative absence, a very great
diminution of heat. The same is true of Ndarkness, which is but light
attenuated to the extreme. Absolute cold and darkness do not exist.
In the intellectual world, stupidity is but weakness of mind; and in the
moral world malevolence, cupidity, and cowardice are only benevolence,
generosity, and courage reduced not to zero but to a very small quantity.
Yet small as it is, it is still a positive quantity, which, with the aid of edu
cation, can be developed, strengthened, and augmented in a positive sense.
But that would be impossible if vices or negative qualities themselves were
positive things, in which case they would have to be eradicated and not
developed, for their development could proceed only in a negative direction.
Physiology Versus the Idea of Innate Qualities. Finally, without allow
ing ourselves to prejudge these serious physiological questions, about which
we admit our complete ignorance, let us add the following consideration,
on the strength of the unanimous opinion o f the authorities of modem
physiological science. It seems to have been proved and established that in
the human organism there are no separate regions and organs for instinc
tive, sensory, moral, and intellectual faculties, and that all these faculties
are developed in one and the same part of the brain by means of the same
nervous mechanism.
Hence it would seem clearly to follow that there can be no question of
various moral or immoral predispositions inevitably determining in the
organization of an infant particular qualities or hereditary and innate vices,
and that moral innateness does not differ in any manner from intellectual
innateness, both reducing themselves to the more or less high degree of
perfection attained in general b y the development of the brain,3
M oral Characteristics Are Transmitted Not by Heredity but by Social
Tradition and Education. Thus the general scientific opinion seems to
agree that there are no special organs in the brain corresponding to diverse
 I52 TH E PO L IT IC A L PH ILO SO PH Y OF B A K U N IN
intellectual qualities, nor to the various moral characteristicsaffections
and passions, good or bad. Consequently, qualities or defects cannot be
inherited or be innate; as w e have already said, in the new-born child this
heredity and innateness can be only material and physiological. Wherein
then consists the progressive, historically transmissible improvement of the
brain, in respect to the intellectual as well as the moral faculties?
O nly in the harmonious development of the whole cerebral and neural
system, that is, in the faithful, refined, vivid character o f the nervous
impressions, as well as in the capacity o f the brain to transform those
impressions into feelings and ideas, and to combine, encompass, and per
manently retain in one's mind the widest associations o f feelings and ideas.
The associations o f feelings and ideas, the development and successive
transformations of which constitute the intellectual and moral aspect of
the history of humanity, do not bring about in the human brain the forma
tion o f new organs corresponding to every separate association, and conse
quently cannot be transmitted to individuals b y w ay of physiological
heredity. W hat is physiologically inherited is the more and more strength
ened, enlarged, and perfected aptitude to conceive and create new
associations.
But the associations themselves and the complex ideas represented b y
them, such as the ideas of God, fatherland, and morality, since they cannot
be innate, are transmitted to individuals only through social traditions and
education. T hey get hold o f the child from the first day of its birth, and
inasmuch as they have already become embodied in the surrounding life,
in the material and moral details of the social world into which the child
has been bom, they penetrate in a thousand different ways, first the child
ish consciousness, and then the adolescent and juvenile consciousness, as
it comes to life, grows, and is shaped by their all-powerful influences.4

CHAPTER 16

the Product o f Environment

Taking education in the broadest sense o f the word, and understand

ing by it not only the inculcation o f moral maxims, but above all the
examples given to the child b y the persons surrounding him, and the
influence o f everything he hears and sees; understanding b y the term
education not only the cultivation o f the childs mind but also the devel
153 Ethics: Man W holly the Product of Environment
opment of his body through nourishment, hygiene, and physical exercise,
we can say, fully convinced that no one will seriously dispute this opinion,
that every child, youth, adult, and even the most mature man, is wholly
the product of the environment that nourished and raised himan inevi
table, involuntary, and consequently irresponsible product.
He enters life without a soul, without a conscience, without the
shadow of an idea or any feeling, but with a human organism whose
individual nature is determined by an infinite number o f circumstances
and conditions preceding the emergence of his will, and which in turn
determines his greater or smaller capacity to acquire and assimilate the
feelings, ideas, and associations worked out b y centuries of development
and transmitted to everyone as a social heritage b y the education which he
receives. Good or bad, this education is imposed upon manand he is in
no w ay responsible for it. It shapes him, in so far as his individual nature
allows, in its own image, so that a man thinks, feels, and desires whatever
the people around him feel, think, and desire.
Natural Differences Are Not Denied. B u rth en , we may be asked,
how can one account for the fact that education which is completely
identical, in appearance at least, often yields widely diverse results in
point of development of character, heart, and mind? But, to begin with,
do not natures themselves differ at birth? This natural and innate dif
ference, small as it may be, is nevertheless positive and real: difference
in temperament, in vital energy, in the predominance of one sense or one
group of organic functions over others, difference in vivacity and natural
capacities.
W e have tried to prove that vices as well as moral qualitiesfacts of
individual and social consciousnesscannot be physically inherited, and
that man cannot be physiologically predetermined toward evil, nor
irrevocably rendered incapable of good. But we have never meant to deny
that individual natures differ widely among themselves, that some o f them
are endowed to a greater extent than others with a capacity for a full
human development. True, we believe that these natural differences are
now quite exaggerated and that most of them should be attributed not to
Nature but to the different education which has been allotted to each
individual.
Physiological Psychology and Pedagogy Are Still in a State of Infancy.
In order to decide this question, it is necessary that the two sciences which
are called upon to solve itphysiological psychology, or the science o f the
brain, and pedagogy, the science of education or of the social development
of the brainshould emerge from the infantile state in which both of them
still are. But once the physiological differences of individuals, o f whatever
degree they may be, are admitted, it clearly follows that a system of edu
cation, excellent in itself as an abstract system, may be good for one but
bad for another.
 154 TH E PO L IT IC A L P H ILO SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
Physiological Heredity Is Not Altogether Denied. It may be argued
that however imperfect education may be, it alone cannot explain the
undeniable fact that in families which are the most lacking in moral sense
we often encounter individuals who strike us because of the nobility of
their instincts and feelings. And, on the contrary, we very often meet, in
families highly developed in a moral and intellectual sense, individuals
base in heart and intellect.
But this is only an apparent contradiction. In reality, although we have
stated that in most cases man is almost entirely the product of the social
conditions among which he is formed, and although we have assigned a
comparatively small part to the influence of the physiological heredity of
the natural qualities received at birth, we have not altogether denied such
a part. W e have even recognized that in some exceptional cases, in men of
genius or of great talent for example, as well as idiots or highly perverse
natures, this influence of natural determination upon the development of
the individuala determination as inevitable as the influence of education
and societymay be great.
The last word on these questions belongs to the physiology of the
brain; but this science has not yet arrived at a point enabling it to solve
them even approximately. T he only thing we can aflirm now with
certitude is that all such questions gravitate between two fatalismsthe
natural, organic, physiologically hereditary fatalism, and the fatalism of
heritage, social tradition, education, and the civic, social, and economic
organization o f every country. In neither of these two fatalisms is there
room for free will.
Accidental and Intangible Factors M aking for Particular Develop
ments. But apart from the natural, positive, or negative determination of
the individual, which may place him in contradiction to the spirit reigning
in his whole family, there may exist in each separate case other hidden
causes that in most cases remain unknown, but which nevertheless have to
be taken into account. The concurrence of special circumstances, an
unforeseen event, an accident insignificant in itself, the chance meeting o f
some particular person, and sometimes a book falling into the hands of an
individual at just the right momentall that which in a child, in an
adolescent, or in a young man, when his imagination is in a state o f fer
ment and when it is still open to the impressions of life, may produce a
radical revolution toward good or bad.
T o this must be added the elasticity proper to all young natures,
especially when they are endowed with a certain natural energy which
makes them revolt against too authoritarian and despotically persistent
influences, and owing to which even an excess of evil may sometimes
produce good.
When Good Results in Evil- Can an excess of goodness, or what
goes by the name of good, produce evil? Yes, when it is imposed as a
 155 Ethics: Man W holly the Product o f Environment
despotic, absolute lawreligious, philosophical in a doctrinaire way,
political, juridical, social, or as the patriarchal law of the familyin a
word, when the good, or what appears to be good, is imposed upon the
individual as a negation of freedom, and is not the product of his freedom.
But in such a case the revolt against good thus imposed is not only natural
but also legitimate; such rebellion, far from being evil, is, on the contrary,
good; for there is nothing good outside of freedom, and freedom is the
absolute source and condition of all good that is truly worthy of that
name: for good is nothing else but freedom.1
Socialism Is Based on Determinism. Socialism, being founded upon
positive science, absolutely rejects the doctrine of free will. It recognizes
that whatever is called human vice and virtue is absolutely the product of
the combined action of Nature and society. Nature, through its ethno
graphical, physiological, and pathological action, creates faculties and
dispositions which are called natural, and the organization of society
develops them, or on the other hand halts or falsifies their development.
A ll individuals, with no exception, are at every moment of their lives what
Nature and society have made them.
Improvement of M ans Morality Is Conditioned by Moralization of
Social Environment. Hence it clearly follows that to make men moral
it is necessary to make their social environment moral. And that can be
done in only one way: b y assuring the triumph of justice, that is, the
complete liberty of everyone in the most perfect equality for all. Inequal
ity of conditions and rights, and the resulting lack of liberty for all, is the
great collective iniquity begetting all individual iniquities. Suppress this
source of iniquities and all the rest will vanish along with it.
A Moral Environment W ill Be Created by Revolution. In view of
the lack of enthusiasm shown b y men of privilege for moral improvement
or what is the same thing, for equalizing their rights with otherswe fear
that the triumph of justice can be effected only through a social revolution.
Three things are necessary for men to become moral, that is, complete
men in the full meaning of the word: birth under hygienic conditions; a
rational and integral education accompanied b y an upbringing based upon
respect for work, reason, equality, and liberty: and a social environment
wherein the human individual, enjoying full liberty, will be equal, in fact
and b y right, to all others.
Does such an environment exist? It does not. It follows then that it
/has to be created.2
Human Justice Versus Legal Justice. W hen we speak of justice we
mean not the justice contained in the legal codes and in Roman juris
prudence, based largely upon deeds of violence achieved by force, violence
consecrated by time and by the benedictions of some churchChristian or
pagan and as such accepted as the absolute principles from which all
law is to be deduced b y a process of logical reasoning. W e speak of
 156 TH E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
justice that is based solely upon human conscience, the justice found in
the conscience of every man, and even in that o f children, and which can
be expressed only in the words equal rights.
This universal justice, which, owing to conquests by force and
influences of religion, has never yet prevailed in the political, juridical, or
economic world, is to serve as the basis of the new world. W ithout this
justice, there can be neither liberty nor republic nor prosperity nor peace.
It must, then, govern all our decisions, so that we may work together
effectively for the establishment of peace.
Moral Law in Action. W hat we ask is the proclaiming anew of the
great principle of the French Revolution: that every man should have the
material and moral means to develop his whole humanity, a principle
which must be translated into the following problem:
To organize society in such a manner that every individual, man or
woman, should, at birth, find almost equal means for the development
of his or her various faculties and the full utilization of his or her work.
T o organize society in such a fashion that exploitation of the labor of
others should be made impossible and that every individual should be
enabled to enjoy the social wealth, which in reality is produced only by
collective labor-only in so far as he contributes directly toward the
creation o f this wealth.8
T h e Moral Law Emanates From Human Nature. The moral law,
the existence o f which we, materialists and atheists, recognize in a more
real manner than the idealists of any school, is indeed an actual law, which
will triumph over all the conspiracies of all the idealists o f the world,
because it emanates from the very nature o f human society, the root basis
of which is to be sought not in God but in animality.4
The primitive, natural man becomes a free man, becomes humanized,
and rises to the status of a moral being,in a word, he becomes conscious
of, and realizes within himself and for himself, his own human form and
his rightsonly to the degree that he becomes aware of this form and
these rights in all his fellow-beings. It follows that in the interests of his
own humanity, his own morality and personal freedom, man must aspire
toward the freedom, morality, and humanity of all other men.
Freedom Is Not the Negation of Solidarity. Social solidarity is the
first human law; freedom is the second law. Both laws interpenetrate each
other and, being inseparable, constitute the essence of humanity. Thus
freedom is not the negation of solidarity; on the contrary, it represents the
development and, so to speak, the humanizing of it.
Thus respect for the freedom of someone else constitutes the highest
duty of men. The only virtue is to love this freedom and serve it. This is
the basis of all morality, and there is no other basis.
Since freedom is the result and the clearest expression of solidarity,
that is, of mutuality of interests, it can be realized only under conditions
157 Ethics: Man W holly the Product of Environment
o f equality. Political equality can be based only upon economic and social
equality. And justice is precisely the realization of freedom through such
equality.7
[W hat has been said above enables us to draw a clear line of demarcation
between the bases of divine and state morality on the one hand, and human
morality on the other.]
Wherein Divine Morality Differs From Human Morality. Divine
morality is based upon two immoral principles: respect for authority and
contempt for humanity. Human morality, on the contrary, is based only
upon contempt for authority and respect for liberty and humanity.
Divine morality considers work a degradation and a punishment; human
morality sees in work the supreme condition of human happiness and
dignity. Divine morality leads inevitably to a policy which recognizes
only the rights of those who, owing to their privileged position, can live
without working. Human morality accords such rights only to those who
live by working; it recognizes that only b y working does man reach the
stature of man.8

c h a p t e r .7 Society and the Individual

Society Is the Basis of Human Existence. Society, preceding in time

any development of humanity and fully partaking of the almighty power
of natural laws, actions, and manifestations, constitutes the very essence
o f human existence. Man is bom into society, just as an ant is bom into an
ant-hill or a bee into its hive; man is born into society from the very
moment that he becomes a human being, that is, a being possessing to a
greater or lesser extent the power of speech and thought. Man does not
choose society; on the contrary, he is the product of the latter, and he is
just as inevitably subjected to natural laws governing his necessary devel
opment as to all other natural laws which he must obey. Society antedates
and at the same time survives every human individual, being in this
respect like Nature itself; it is eternal like Nature, or rather, having been
bom upon this earth, it will last as long as our earth itself.
Revolt Against Society Is Inconceivable. A radical revolt by man
against society would therefore be just as impossible as a revolt against
Nature, human society being nothing else but the last great manifestation
or creation of Nature upon this earth. And an individual who would want
to rebel against society, that is, against Nature in general and his own
 158 TH E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

nature in particular, would place himself beyond the pale of real existence,
would plunge into nothingness, into an absolute void, into lifeless abstrac
tion, into God. It follows that it is just as impossible to ask whether society
is good or evil as it is to ask whether Naturethe universal, material, real,
absolute, sole, and supreme beingis good or ev il It is much more than
that: it is an immense, overwhelming fact, a positive and primitive fact,
having existence prior to all consciousness, to all ideas, to all intellectual
and moral discernment. It is the very basis, it is the world in which
inevitably, and at a much later stage, there begins to develop what we call
good and evil.1
There Is No Humanity Outside of Society. During a very long
period, lasting thousands of years, our species roamed the earth in isolated
herds. That was before, together with the first emergence of speech and
the first gleam of thought, there awakened within the social and animal
environment of one of those human herds, the first self-conscious or free
individuality. Apart from society, man would never cease to be a speech
less and an unreasoning animal, a thousand times poorer and more depend
ent upon external Nature than most of the quadrupeds, above which he
now towers so proudly.
Even the most wretched individual of our present society could not
exist and develop without the cumulative social efforts of countless
generations. Thus the individual, his freedom and reason, are the products
o f society, and not vice versa: society is not the product of individuals
comprising it; and the higher, the more fully the individual is developed,
the greater his freedomand the more he is the product of society, the
more does he receive from society and the greater his debt to it.
Society Is Acted Upon By Individuals. Society in turn is indebted to
individuals. One might even say that there is not an individual, inferior
though he may be by nature and illfavored by life and upbringing, who
does not in turn influence society, be it even to the smallest extent, by his
feeble labor, his even more feeble intellectual and moral development, and
his attitudes and actions even though they may be almost unnoticed. It
stands to reason, of course, that he himself does not even suspect and does
not will this influence exerted by him upon the society which produced
him.
Individuals Are the Instrumentalities of Social Development. For
the real life o f society, at every instant of its existence, is nothing but the
sum total of all the lives, developments, relations, and actions of all the
individuals comprising it. But these individuals got together and united
not arbitrarily, not with a compact, but independently of their will and
consciousness. They are not only brought together and combined into one,
but are begotten, in the material, intellectual, and moral life they express
and embody in actuality. Therefore the action of those individualsthe
conscious, and in most cases, unconscious actionupon society, which
159 Society and the Individual
begot them, is in reality a case o f society acting upon itself by means of
the individuals comprising it. The latter are the instrumentalities o f social
development begotten and promoted by society.
M an Is Not Born a Free and Socially Independent Individual. Man
does not create society but is born into it. He is bom not free, but in
fetters, as the product of a particular social environment created b y a long
series of past influences, developments, and historic facts. He bears the
stamp of the region, climate, ethnic type, and class to which he belongs,
the economic and political conditions of social life, and finally, of the
locality, the city or village, the house, family, and circle of people into
which he was bom.
A ll that determines his character and nature, giVes him a definite lan
guage, and imposes upon him, with no chance of resistance on his part,
a ready-made world of thoughts, habits, feelings, and mental vistas, and
places him, before consciousness awakens in him, in a rigorously deter
mined relationship to the surrounding social world. H e becomes organically
a member of a certain society, and fettered, inwardly and outwardly,
permeated to the end of his days with its beliefs, prejudices, passions, and
habits, he is but the most unconscious and faithful reflection of this society.
Freedom Is Generated at a Later Stage of Individual Revolt. There
fore every man is born and, in the very first years of his life, remains the
slave of society; and perhaps, not even a slavebecause in order to be
a slave one has to be aware of his state of slaverybut rather an uncon
scious and an involuntary offshoot of that society.8
Social environment, and public opinion, which always express the
material and political opinion of that environment, weigh down heavily
upon free thought, and it takes a great deal of power of thought, and even
more of anti-social interest and passion, to withstand that heavy oppres
sion. Society itself, by its positive and negative action, generates free
thought in man, and in turn, it is society which often crushes it.
Man is so much of a social animal that it is impossible to think of him
apart from society.3
T h e Idealists1 Point of View. The point o f 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. As a free and immortal
being, infinite and complete in himself, he does not stand in need of
society. From which follows that if man does enter society he does it
because of the original fall, or because he forgets and loses the con
sciousness of his immortality and freedom.4
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
 160 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N I N
free prior to and apart from society, he necessarily joins in forming this
society by a voluntary act, by a sort o f contractwhether 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.
T h e State Takes the Place of Society in the Idealistic Theory. 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. On the one hand it recognizes only individuals, existing for them
selves and free in themselves, and on the other, this conventional society,
the State, formed arbitrarily by these individuals and based upon a
contractwhether formal or tacit. (T h ey know very well that no historic
State ever had any kind of contract for its basis, and that all States were
founded b y violence, by conquest. But this fiction of free contract as the
foundation of the State is quite necessary for them, and without further
ceremony they make full use o f it.)
T h e Asocial Character of Christian Saints; T heir Lives the Acme of
Idealistic Individualism. The human individuals whose mass, united b y
a convention, forms the State, would appear in this theory as beings
altogether singular and full of contradictions. 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 them
selves 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 from the first point o f 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 w e have seen in the first centuries o f Chris
tianity that holy and steadfast men who had taken in earnest the immortal
ity 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. W ith 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. It was always to save others and never to save them
selves, nor to attain greater self-perfection. On the contrary, they risked
 161 Society and the Individual
losing their own souls b y re-entering society, from which they had
escaped in horror, deeming it the school of all corruption, and as soon as
their holy work was completed, they would return as quickly as they
could to their desert in order to perfect themselves again by incessant
contemplation of their individual beings, their solitary souls, alone in the
presence of God.
An Immortal Soul Must Be the Soul of an Absolute Being. This is
an example to be followed by all those who still believe in the immortality
of the soul, in innate freedom or free will, if only they want to save their
souls and worthily prepare themselves for eternal life. I repeat: the saintly
anchorites who, because o f their self-imposed isolation, ended in complete
imbecility, were entirely logical. Once the soul is immortal, that is,
infinite in its essence, it should therefore be self-sufficient. It is only
transitory, limited, and finite beings that can complete one another; the
infinite does not have to complete itself.
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 soa 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 o f 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 inferior
ity are absurd in their implication.
T h e Idea of God and T h a t of Immortality of Soul Are M utually
Contradictory. 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 w ay 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 superior
ity of God, the holy recluses o f Christianity, too humble to revolt against
God, rebelled against the equal infinity of men, rebelled against society.
' T h e Logic of Personal Salvation. They declared with much reason
that they did not need society in order to be saved: and since they were
b y a strange fatality [here follows an illegible word in Bakunins manu
script] degraded infinitiesthe society of God, and self-contemplation in
the presence of that absolute infinity, were quite sufficient for them.
 162 TH E PO LITIC A L PH ILO SO PH Y OF B A K U N IN

I repeat again: their example is one to be followed by all those who

believe in the immortality o f the soul. From their point of view society
cannot offer them anything but certain perdition. And in effect what does
it give to men? First, material wealth, which can be produced in sufficient
amount only b y collective labor. But to one who believes in eternal
existence, wealth can be only an object of contempt. For did not Jesus
Christ say to his disciples: Lay not up for yourself treasures upon the
earth, for where thy treasure is there will thy heart be also, and It is
easier for a great rope (or a camel in another version) to pass through
a needles eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God ? (I can
very well picture to myself the expression upon the faces of the pious and
wealthy bourgeois Protestants of England, America, Germany, and Swit
zerland, as they read those Gospel sentences which are so decisive and
disagreeable with regard to them.)
Production of W ealth 1$ Necessarily a Social Act and Is Incompatible
W ith Personal Salvation. Jesus Christ was right: the lust for material
riches and the salvation of the immortal soul are absolutely incompatible,
and if one believes in the immortality of the soul, is it not better to
renounce the comfort and luxury afforded b y society and subsist upon
roots, as was done by the saintly hermits in saving their souls for eternity,
than to lose ones soul as the price of a dozen years o f material pleasures?
This calculation is so simple, so evidently just, that we are compelled
to think that the pious and rich bourgeois, the bankers, industrialists, and
merchants who do such wonderful business by means so well known to
us, and who still keep on repeating the sayings of the Gospels, count in
no wise upon immortality o f soul for themselves, generously abandoning
it to the proletariat, while humbly reserving for themselves those miser
able material goods which they amass upon this earth.
Culture and Civilized Values Are Incompatible W ith the Idea of
Immortality of the Soul. Apart from material blessings, what else does
society give to men? Carnal, human, earthly affections, civilization, and
culture o f the mind, all of which loom so vastly from the human, transi
tory, and terrestrial point of view, but which are a mere zero in the face
of eternity, immortality, and God. And is not the greatest human wisdom
but mere folly before God?
There is a legend of the Eastern Church which tells of two saintly
hermits who voluntarily imprisoned themselves for several decades on a
desert island, and having isolated themselves from each other and passing
their days and nights in contemplation and prayer, finally arrived at a
point where both nearly lost the power o f speech. O f their old vocabulary
they retained only three or four words, all of which, taken together, did
not make any sense, but which nevertheless expressed before God the
most sublime aspirations of their souls. O f course they lived naturally on
roots like herbivorous animals. From the human point of view those two
 163 Society and the Individual
men were imbeciles or madmen, but from the divine point of view, from
the point of view o f the belief in the immortality of the soul, they showed
rhcmselves to be more profound calculators than Galileo and Newton,
f or they sacrificed a few decades of earthly prosperity and the spirit of
this world in order to gain eternal beatitude and the divine spirit.
Society as a Result o M ans Original Fall. It is clear then that man,
in so far as he is endowed with an immortal soul, with infinity and liberty
inherent in this soul, is pre-eminently an anti-social being. And had he
always been wise, if, exclusively preoccupied with his eternity, he had
had the intelligence to turn his back upon all the good things, affections,
and vanities of this earth, he never would have emerged from the state o f
divine innocence or imbecility and never would have had to form a
society.
In a word, had Adam and Eve never tasted the fruit of the tree of
knowledge, we would still be living like beasts in the earthly paradise which
God assigned to them for their habitation. But as soon as men wanted to
know, to become civilized, humanized, to think, speak, and enjoy material
blessings, they necessarily had to emerge from their solitude and organ
ize themselves into a society. For just as they are inwardly infinite, im
mortal, and free, so are they externally limited, moral, feeble, and dependent
upon the external world.8
A contradictory being, inwardly infinite as the spirit, but outwardly
dependent, defective, and material, man is compelled to combine with
others into a society, not for the needs of his soul, but in order to preserve
his body. Society then is formed b y a sort of sacrifice of the interests and
the independence of the soul to the contemptible needs of the body. It is
a veritable fall and enslavement for the individual who is inwardly free
and immortal; it is at least a partial renunciation o f his primitive liberty.
T he Stock Theory of Individual Renunciation of Liberty for the Sake
of Forming a Society. W e all know the sacramental phrase which in the
jargon of all the partisans of the State and juridical right expresses this
fall and this sacrifice, this first fateful step toward human enslavement. 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 societythat is,
 164 T H E P O L I T I C A L P H I L O S O P H Y OF B A K U N I N
as a Stateis the negation of liberty. Here then is the result o f 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 of the collective development of humanity.8

chapter 18

Strictly Determined

Considered from the point o f view of their earthly existencethat is,

not their fictitious but their real existencehuman beings in the mass pre
sent such a degrading spectacle, appearing to be so hopelessly lacking in
initiative, power of will, and mind, that it takes a great deal of the capacity
for self-delusion to be able to find in them an immortal soul and the
shadow of any free will whatever. T o us they appear as beings that are
absolutely and inevitably determined; determined above all by external
Nature, by the physical relief of the country surrounding them, and by
all the material conditions of their existence. T h ey are determined by count
less relations of political, religious, and social character, b y customs, usages,
laws, by a world of prejudices or thoughts slowly evolved during past
centuries; by all that they find at birth already present in society, which
they do not create but of which they are first o f all products and after
ward instruments. Among a thousand people one can hardly find a single
person of whom it can be said, from a relative and not an absolute point of
view, that he wills and thinks independently.
T h e Majority Think and W ill According to Given Social Patterns.
The great majority of human individuals, not only among the ignorant
masses but among the civilized and privileged classes as well, do not will
and do not think any differently from what the world around them wills
and thinks. N o doubt they believe that they do their own thinking and
willing, but in reality they only reproduce slavishly, by rote, with insig
nificant and scarcely perceptible modifications, the thoughts and wishes of
other people. This slavishness, this routine, the never-failing source of
commonplaces, this lack of rebellion in the will and the lack of initiative
in the thoughts of individuals, are the principal causes of the dismaying
slowness of the historic development of humanity. T o us materialists and
realists, who believe in neither the immortality of the soul nor in free will,
this slowness, distressing as it may be, appears only as a natural fact.
 165 Individuals Are Strictly Determined
Man Is a Social Animal. Emerging from the condition of the gorilla,
man arrives only with difficulty at the awareness o f his humanity and the
realization of his liberty. In the beginning he has neither liberty nor the
awareness thereof; he comes into the world as a ferocious beast and as a
slave, and he becomes humanized and progressively emancipated only in
the midst of society, which necessarily precedes the emergence of mans
thought, speech, and will. Man can attain that only through the collective
efforts o f all the past and present members of this society,, which therefore
is the natural basis and starting point of his human existence.
Hence it follows that man realizes his individual freedom only by
rounding out his personality with the aid of other individuals belonging
to the same social environment; he can achieve that only b y dint of labor
and the collective power of society, without which man would no doubt
remain the most stupid and most miserable of all wild animals living upon
this earth. According to the materialist system, which is the only natural
and logical system, society, far from limiting and decreasing, creates the
freedom of the individual, creates, on the contrary, this freedom. Society
is the root, the tree of freedom, and liberty is its fruit. Consequently, in
every epoch man has to seek his liberty not at the beginning but at the
end of history, and one may say that the real and complete emancipation of
every individual is the true, great objective, the supreme purpose of
history.1
Rousseaus Fallacy. It was a great fallacy on the part o f Jean Jacques
Rousseau to have assumed that primitive society was established b y a free
contract entered into b y savages. But Rousseau was not the only one to
uphold such views. Most o f the jurists and modem writers, whether of
the Kantian or the other individualist and liberal schools, who, since they
do not accept the theological idea of society being founded upon divine
right, nor that of the Hegelian school (of society being determined as the
more or less mystic realization of objective morality), nor the primitive
animal society of the naturalist school, take nolens volenslacking any
other foundationthe tacit contract, as their point of departure.
A tacit contract! That it to say, a wordless and consequently a thought
less and will-less contract! A revolting nonsense! A n absurd fiction, and
what is morea wicked fiction! A n unworthy hoax! For it presupposes
that while I was in the state of not being able to will, to think, to speak, I
bound myself and m y descendantssimply by reason of having let myself
/ be victimized without raising any protestinto perpetual slavery.
Absolute Domination by the State Implied by the Social Contract
Theory. The consequences of the social contract are in effect disastrous,
for they lead to absolute domination b y the State. And still, the principle
itself, taken as a starting point, seemed extremely liberal in character. Prior
to forming this contract, the individuals are supposed to have enjoyed un
bounded liberty, for, according to this theory, the natural man, the savage,
 166 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

is in possession of complete freedom. W e already have expressed our opin

ion about this natural liberty, which is simply the absolute dependence of
the man-gorilla upon the permanent and besetting influences of the external
world. But let us assume, however, that man was really free at the starting
point o f his historic development; w hy then was society formed? In order
to assure, w e are told, his security against all possible invasions o f this
external world, including invasions b y other meneither combined into
an association or as isolated individualsbut who do not belong to this
newly formed society.
Society as the Result of Limitation of Liberty. So here then we see
those primitive men, absolutely free, every one of them b y himself and
for himself, enjoying this unlimited freedom so long as they do not meet
one another, so long as every one o f them is immersed in the state of abso
lute individual isolation. The freedom of one man does not stand in need
of the freedom of any other man; on the contrary, every one o f those
individual liberties is self-sufficient and exists b y itself, so that it necessarily
appears as the negation of the freedom of all the others, and all of them
meeting together, are bound to limit and detract from one another, are
bound to contradict, to destroy one another. . . .
In order not to carry out this mutual destruction to the bitter end, they
enter into a contracttacit or formalby which they abandon some of those
liberties, so as to assure for themselves the remainder. This contract be
comes the foundation of society or rather of the State; for, it is to be
noted, that under this theory there is no room for society; it is only the
State that has existence, or rather, society, according to this theory, is
altogether absorbed b y the State.
Social Laws Should Not Be Confounded with Juridical and Political
Laws. Society is the natural mode of existence o f the human collective,
and is independent of any contract. It is governed b y customs or tradi
tional usages and never by laws. It progresses slowly through the moving
power of individual initiative, but not because of the thought or will of
the legislator. There are many laws which govern society without the
latter being aware o f their presence, but those are natural laws, inherent
in the social body, just as physical laws are inherent in material bodies.
The greater part of those laws still remain unknown, and yet they have
been governing human society ever since its birth, independently of the
thought and will of men comprising such society. Those laws therefore
should not be confounded with the political and juridical laws which, pro
mulgated by some legislative power, are deemed to be, according to the
social contract theory, logical deductions from the first compact know
ingly formulated by men.
T h e Negation of Society Is the Meeting Point of the Absolutist and
Liberal Theories of the State. The State is not a direct product of Na
ture; it does not precede, as society does, the awakening o f thought in man,
>* 1 67 Individuals Are Strictly Determined
and later we shall try to show how religious consciousness created the
State in the midst of a natural society. According to liberal political writ
ers, the first State was created b y mans free and conscious will; but
according to the absolutists, the State is a divine creation. In both cases
it dominates society and tends to absorb it altogether.
In the second case (the absolutist] this absorption is quite self-explana
tory: a divine institution must necessarily devour all natural organizations.
What is more curious in this case is that the individualistic school, with
its free-contract theory, leads to the same result And, indeed, this school
begins by denying the very existence of a natural society antedating the
contract, since such a society would presuppose the existence of natural
relations among individuals and consequently a reciprocal limitation of their
libertieswhich would be contrary to the absolute liberty enjoyed, accord
ing to this theory, prior to the conclusion of the contract, and which would
be neither less nor more than this contract itself, existing as a natural fact
and preceding the free contract. According to this theory, human society
begins only with the conclusion o f the contract. But what then is this
society? It is the pure and logical realization of the contract with all of
its implied tendencies and legislative and practical consequencesit is the
State.2
T h e Hypothetical Absolute Freedom of the Pre-Contract Individuals.
H ow ridiculous then are the ideas of the individualists of the Jean Jacques
Rousseau school and of the Proudhonian mutualists who conceive society
as the result of the free contract o f individuals absolutely independent of
one another and entering into mutual relations only because of the con
vention drawn up among them. As if these men had dropped from the
skies, bringing with them speech, will, original thought, and as if they
were alien to anything of the earth, that is, anything having social origin.
Had society consisted o f such absolutely independent individuals, there
would have been no need, nor even the slightest possibility of them enter
ing into an association; society itself would be non-existent, and those
free individuals, not being able to live and function upon the earth, would
have to wing their w ay back to their heavenly abode.8
Absolute Individual Liberty Is Absolute Non-Being. Nature, as well
as human society, which is nothing else but that same Natureeverything
that lives, does so under the categorical condition of decisively interfer
ing in the life of someone else. . . .
The worse it is for those who are so ignorant of the natural and social
1dw o f human solidarity that they deem possible and even desirable the
absolute independence of individuals in regard to one another. T o will it
is to will the disappearance of society, for all social life is but the con
tinuous mutual interdependence of individuals and masses. A ll men, even
the most intelligent and the strongest, are at every instant of their lives
the producers and the products. Freedom itself, the freedom of every man,
 168 THE PO LITICA L PH ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

is the ever-renewed effect of the great mass of physical, intellectual, and

moral influences to which this man is subjected b y the people surrounding
him and the environment in which he was bom and in which he passed
his whole life.
T o wish to escape this influence in the name o f some transcendental,
divine freedom, some self-sufficient and absolutely egoistical freedom, is
to aim toward non-being. It means to forego influencing ones fellow-man,
to forego any social action, even the expression of ones thoughts and feel
ingsthat is, again to tend toward absolute non-being. This notorious inde
pendence, so greatly extolled by idealists and metaphysicians, and personal
freedom thus conceivedis just non-existence, plain and simple. . . .
T o do away with this reciprocal influence is tantamount to death. And
in demanding the freedom o f the masses we do not intend to do away with
natural influences to which man is subjected b y individuals and groups.
A ll we want is to do away with factitious, legitimized influences, to do
away with privileges in exerting influence.4
Natural and Social Laws Are of the Same Category. Man can never
be free with respect to natural and social laws. Laws, which for the greater
convenience of science, are divided into two categories, belong in reality
to one and the same category, for they all are equally natural laws, neces
sary laws which constitute the basis and the very condition of all existence,
so that no living beings can rebel against them without destroying them
selves.
Natural Laws Are Not Political Laws. But it is necessary to distin
guish natural laws from authoritarian, arbitrary, political, religious, and
civil laws which the privileged classes have created in the course of history,
always to enable exploitation of the work of the masses, always with the
sole aim o f curbing the liberty of the masseslaws which under the pre
text o f a fictitious morality, have always been the source of the deepest
immorality. Thus we have involuntary and inevitable obedience to all laws
which constitute, independently of all human will, the very life of Nature
and society; but on the other hand, there should be independence (as
nearly unconditional as it is possible to attain) on the part of everyone
with respect to all claims to dictate to other people, with respect to all
human wills (collective as well as individual) tending to impose not their
natural influence but their law, their despotism.
Human Personality Grows Only in Society. A s to the natural influ
ence which men exercise upon one another it also is one of those condi
tions of social life against which revolt would be impossible. This influence
is the very basismaterial, moral, and intellectualof human solidarity. The
human individual, a product of solidarity, that is, of society, while remain
ing subject to its natural laws, may well react against it when influenced
b y feelings coming from the outside and especially from an alien society,
but the individual cannot leave this particular society without immediately
 1 69 Individuals Are Strictly Determined
placing himself in another sphere of solidarity and without becoming sub
jected to new influences. For to man, life outside of all society, and out
side of all human influences, a life of absolute isolation, is tantamount to
intellectual, moral, and material death. Solidarity is not the product but
the mother of individuality, and human personality can be bom and can
develop only in human society.6
Individual and Social Interests Are Not Incompatible. W e are told
that in reality it will never be possible to obtain the agreement and uni
versal solidarity between individual interests and those of society, the
reason being that these interests are contradictory and therefore cannot
counterbalance each other or arrive at some mutual understanding. Our
reply to this objection is that if up to now those interests have not arrived
at a mutual agreement, it is due solely to the State, which has sacrificed the
interests of the majority for the benefit o f a privileged minority. That is
why this famed incompatibility and the struggle of personal interests with
the interests of society reduce themselves to lies and trickery, bom out of
the theological lie which conceived the doctrine o f original sin in order to
dishonor man and destroy in him the awareness of his own inner worth.

chapter 19 Philosophy o f History

Th e Struggle for Existence in Human History. W hoever has studied

history even a little cannot fail to notice that, underlying all the religious
and theological struggles, however abstract, sublime, and ideal they may
have been, there was always some outstanding material interest. A ll the
racial, national, State, and class wars had only one object, and that was
domination, which is the necessary condition of and guarantee for the
possession and enjoyment of wealth. Human history, considered from this
point of view, is simply the continuation of the great struggle for life,
which, according to Darwin, constitutes the basic law of the organic world.1
Struggle for Existence Is a Universal Law. Considered from this point
of view, the natural world presents to us a deadly and bloody picture of a
fierce and perpetual struggle, a struggle for life. Man is not the only one to
wage /this struggle: all animals, all living beingsnay, what is more, all
existing thingscarry within themselves, although in a less apparent manner
than man, the germs of their own destruction, and so to speak are their
own enemies. The same natural inevitability begets, preserves, and destroys
them. Every class of things, every plant and animal species, lives only at
the expense of others; one devours the other, so that the natural world can
 170 THE P O LITICA L PH ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

be regarded as a bloody hecatomb, as a grim tragedy incited b y hunger.

The natural world is the arena o f a ceaseless struggle which knows no
mercy nor respite. . . .
Is is possible that this inevitable law also exists in the human and social
world?2
Wars Are M ainly Economic in Their Motivation. Alas! W e find can
nibalism at the cradle of human civilization, and along with that, and fol
lowing in point of time, we find wars of extermination, wars among races
and nations: wars of conquest, wars to maintain equilibrium, political and
religious wars, wars waged in the name of great ideas like the one now
waged b y France with the present Emperor at its head, patriotic wars for
greater national unity like those contemplated now on the one hand by
the Pan-German Minister of Berlin and on the other hand by the Pan-
Slavist Tsar of St. Petersburg.
And what do we find beneath all that, beneath all the hypocritical
phrases used in order to give these wars the appearance of humanity and
right? Always the same economic phenomenon: the tendency on the part
of some to live and prosper at the expense of others. A ll the rest is mere
humbug. The ignorant, the naive, and the fools are entrapped by it, but
the strong men who direct the destinies of the State know only too well
that underlying all those wars there is only one motive: pillage, the seizing
of someone elses wealth and the enslavement of someone elses labor.3
Political idealism is no less pernicious and absurd, no less hypocritical than
the idealism of religion, of which it is but a different manifestation, the
worldly or earthly application.4
Phases of Historic Development. Men, who are pre-eminently carniv
orous animals, began their history with cannibalism. N o w they aspire
toward universal association, toward collective production and collective
consumption of wealth.
But between these two extreme pointswhat a horrible and bloody
tragedy! And we are not yet through with this tragedy. Following canni
balism came slavery, then came serfdom, then wage serfdom, which is to
be followed by the terrible day of retribution, and latermuch laterthe
era of fraternity. Here are the phases through which the animal struggle
for life must pass in its gradual transformation in the course of historic
development into a humane organization of life-5
It has been well established that human history, like the history of all
other animal species, began with war. This war, which did not have and
still has not got any other aim but to conquer the means of existence, had
various phases of development running parallel to the various phases o f
civilizationthat is, of the development of mans needs and the means to
satisfy them.
T h e Invention of Tools Marks the First Phase of Civilization. A t
the beginning man, who was an omnivorous animal, subsisted like many
171 Philosophy o f History
oilier animals on fruits and plants, and b y hunting and fishing. During
many centuries man no doubt hunted and fished just as the beasts are still
doing, without the aid of any other instruments but those with which he
was endowed by Nature. The first time he made use of the crudest weapon,
n simple stick or a stone. Therewith he performed an act ,of thinking and
asserted himself, no doubt without suspecting it, as a thinking animal, as a
man. For even the most primitive weapon had to be adapted to the pro
jected aim, and this presupposes a certain amount o f mental calculation,
which essentially distinguishes the man-animal from all the other animals.
Owing to this faculty of reflecting, thinking, inventing, man perfected his
weapons, very slowly, it is true, in the course of many centuries, and
thereby was transformed into a hunter or an armed ferocious beast.
Multiplying of Animal Species Is Always in Direct Proportion to the
Means of Subsistence. Having arrived at the first stage o f civilization, the
small human groups found it much easier to obtain their food b y killing
off living beings, including other men, who also were used as food, than
did animals which lacked instruments for hunting or carrying on o f wars.
And since the multiplying of animal species is always in direct proportion
to the means of subsistence, it is evident that men were bound to multiply
more rapidly than the animals o f other species, and that finally the time
was bound to arrive when uncultivated Nature was not capable any more
of sustaining all the people.
Cattle Breeding the Next Phase of Civilization. If human reason
were not progressive b y its nature; if it did not develop to an ever greater
extent, resting on one hand upon tradition, which preserves for the benefit
of future generations all the knowledge acquired b y past generations, and
on the other hand expanding in scope as a result of the power o f speech,
which is inseparable from the faculty of thought; if it were not endowed
with the unlimited faculty of inventing new processes to defend human
existence against all natural forces that are hostile to itthis insufficiency of
Nature necessarily would have put a limit on the propagation of the human
species.
But owing to that precious faculty which permits him to know, think,
and understand, man is able to overcome this natural limit which curbs the
development of all other animal species. W hen natural sources became
exhausted he created new artificial sources. Profiting not b y physical force
but by superior intelligence, he went beyond killing for immediate con
sumption, and began to subdue, tame, and break in some wild beasts in
order tty make them serve his ends. Thus in the course of many centuries
groups of hunters became transformed into groups o f herdsmen.
Cattle Breeding Superseded by Agriculture. This new source of sub
sistence helped to increase even more the human species, which in turn
placed before the human race the necessity of inventing ever new means of
subsistence. The exploitation of animals was not sufficient any more and so
 172 THE P O LITIC A L P H ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

men began to cultivate land. Nomadic peoples and herdsmen were trans
formed in the course of many more centuries into agricultural people.
It was at this stage of history that slavery in the proper sense o f the
word began. Men, who were savages in the full sense of that word, began
at first b y devouring the enemies who had been killed or made prisoners.
But when they realized the advantages obtained b y making use o f dumb
animals instead o f killing them, they likewise were led to see the advantage
accruing from making the same use of man, the most intelligent of all
animals. So the vanquished enemy was not devoured any longer, but instead
became a slave, forced to work in order to maintain his master.
Slavery Makes Its Appearance W ith the Agricultural Phase of Civiliza
tion. The work of the pastoral peoples is so simple and easy that it hardly
requires the work o f slaves. That is w hy we see that with the nomadic and
pastoral tribes the number of slaves was quite limited, if they were not alto
gether absent. It is different with agricultural and settled peoples. Agricul
ture demands assiduous, painful, day-to-day labor. And the free man of the
forests and plains, the hunter or cattle-breeder, takes to agriculture with a
great deal of repugnance. That is why, as we see it now, for example, with
the savage peoples of America, it was upon the weaker sex, the women,
that the heaviest burdens and the most distasteful domestic work were
thrown. Men knew of no other occupation but hunting and war-making,
which even in our own times are still considered the most noble callings,
and, holding in disdain all other occupations, they lazily smoked their
pipes while their unfortunate women, those natural slaves of the barbarous
man, succumbed under the burden o f their daily toil.
Another forward step is made in civilizationand the slave takes the
part o f the woman. A beast of burden, endowed with intelligence, forced
to bear the whole load of physical labor, he creates leisure for the ruling
class and makes possible his masters intellectual and moral development.6
The Goals of Human History. The human species, having started out
with animal existence, tends steadfastly toward the realization of humanity
upon the earth. . . . And history itself set us this vast and sacred task of
transforming the millions of wage-slaves into a human, free society based
upon equal rights for all.7
T he Three Constituent Elements of Human History. Man emanci
pated himself through his own efforts; he separated himself from animality
and constituted himself a man; he began his distinctively human history and
development by an act of disobedience and knowledgethat is, by rebellion
and by thought.
Three elements, or if you like, three fundamental principles, constitute
the essential conditions of all human development, collective or individual,
in history: 1. hitman animality; 2. thought; and 3. rebellion. T o the first
properly corresponds social and private economy; to the second, science;
and to the third, liberty .*
'*i73 Philosophy of History
W hat Is Meant By Historic Elements. B y historic elements I mean
the general conditions of any real development whateverfor example, in
this case, the conquest of the world by the Romans and the meeting of
the God of the Jews with the ideal of divinity of the Greeks. T o impregnate
the historical elements, to cause them to run through a series of new his
toric transformations, a living spontaneous fact was needed, without which
they might have remained many centuries longer in a state of unproductive
elements. This fact was not lacking in Christianity; it was the propaganda,
martyrdom, and death o f Jesus Christ.
History Is the Revolutionary Negation of the Past. But from the mo
ment that this animal origin of man is accepted, everything is explained.
History then appears to us as the revolutionary negation of the past, now
slow, apathetic, sluggish, now passionate and powerful. It consists precisely
in the progressive denial of the primitive animality of man through the
development of his humanity. Man, a wild beast, cousin o f the gorilla, has
emerged from the profound darkness of animal instinct into the light of the
mind, which explains in a wholly natural w ay all his past mistakes and
partly consoles us for his present errors.10
T h e Dialectics of Idealism and Materialism. Every development im
plies the negation of its starting point. The basis or starting point, according
to the materialistic school, being material, the negation must necessarily be
ideal. Starting from the totality o f the real world, or from what is ab
stractly called matter, it logically arrives at the real idealizationthat is, at
the humanization, at the full and complete emancipationof society. On
the contrary, and for the same reason, the basis and starting point of the
idealistic school being ideal, it necessarily arrives at the materialization of
society, at the organization o f brutal despotism and an iniquitous and ig
noble exploitation, in the form of Church and State. The historic develop
ment o f man, according to the materialistic school, is a progressive ascension;
in the idealistic system it can be nothing but a continuous fall.
Whatever human question w e may want to consider, we always find
the same essential contradiction between the two schools. Thus materialism
starts from animality to establish humanity; idealism starts with divinity to
establish slavery and condemn the masses to perpetual animality. Material
ism denies free will and ends in the establishment of liberty; idealism, in
the name of human dignity, proclaims free will, and, on the ruins of every
liberty, founds authority. Materialism rejects the principle of authority,
because it rightly considers it the corollary of animality, and because, on
the contrary, the triumph o f humanity, which is the object and chief sig
nificance of history, can be realized only through liberty. In a word, what
ever question we may take up, we will always find the idealists in the
very act of practical materialism, while we see the materialists pursuing
and realizing the most grandly ideal aspirations and thoughts.
Matter in the Idealist Conception. History, in the system of the ideal-
 174 THE P O LITIC A L PH ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

ists, can be nothing but a continuous fall. T h ey begin with a terrible fall,
from which they can never recoverby a somersault from the sublime re
gions o f the pure and absolute idea into matter. And into what kind of
matter! N ot into matter that is eternally active and mobile, full o f prop
erties and forces, life and intelligence, ais we see it in the real worldbut
into abstract matter, impoverished and reduced to absolute through the
regular looting b y those Prussians o f thought, that is, the theologians and
metaphysicians, who have stripped it of everything to give it to their
emperorto their God; into the matter which, deprived o f all action and
movement of its own, represents, in opposition to the divine idea, nothing
but absolute stupidity, impenetrability, inertness, and immobility.11
Humanistic Values in History. Science knows that respect for man is
the supreme law o f humanity, and that the great, the real goal o f history,
its only legitimate objective, is the humanization and emancipation, the
real liberty, the prosperity and happiness of each individual living in society.
For, in the final analysis, if we would not fall back into the liberty-destroy
ing fiction of the public weal represented b y the State, a fiction always
founded on the systematic immolation o f the great masses o f people, we
must clearly recognize that collective liberty and prosperity exist only in
so far as they represent the sum of individual liberties and prosperities.12
Man emerged from animal slavery, and passing through divine slavery,
a transitory period between his animality and his humanity, he is now
marching on to the conquest and realization of human liberty. W hence it fol
lows that the antiquity o f a belief, of an idea, far from proving anything
in its favor, ought, on the contrary, to make it suspect. For behind us is
our animality and before us our humanity, and the light of humanitythe
only light that can warm and enlighten us, the only thing that can eman
cipate us, and give us dignity, freedom, and happiness, that can make us
realize fraternity among usis never at the beginning, but in relation to
the epoch in which w e live, always at the end o f history. Let us then
never look backward, let us look ever forward; for forward is our sun
light and salvation. If it is permissible, and even useful and necessary, to
turn back to study our past, it is only in order to establish what we have
been and must no longer be, what we have believed and thought and must
no longer believe or think, what we have done and must do nevermore.13
T he Uneven Course of Human Progress. So long as a people has not
fallen into a state of decadence there is always progress in this salutary
traditionthis sole teacher o f the masses. But one cannot say that this prog
ress is the same in every epoch of the history o f a people. On the contrary,
it proceeds b y leaps and bounds. A t times it is very rapid, very sensitive,
and far-reaching; at other times it slows down or stops altogether, and
then again it even seems to go backward. W hat accounts for all that?
This evidently depends upon the character o f events in a given historic
epoch. There are events which electrify people and push them ahead; other
 1 75 Philosophy o f History
events have such a deplorable, disheartening, and depressing effect upon the
peoples state o f mind as very often to crush, lead astray, or at times alto
gether pervert them. In general one can observe in the historic development
of people two inverse movements which I shall permit myself to compare
to the ebb and flow of the oceanic tides.
Humanity Has Meaning Only in the Light of Its Basic Humanistic
Drives. In certain epochs, which ordinarily are the precursors of great
historic events, great triumphs of humanity, everything appears to proceed
at an accelerated rate, everything exhales vigor and power; minds, hearts,
and wills seem to act in unison as they reach out toward the conquest of
new horizons. It seems then as if an electric current were set running
throughout all society, uniting individuals the furthest removed from one
another in one and the same feeling, and the most disparate minds in a
single thought, and imprinting on all the same will.
A t such a time everyone is full o f confidence and courage, because he
is carried away by the feeling which animates everybody. W ithout getting
away from modem history, w e can point to the end of the eighteenth
century, the eve of the Great [French] Revolution, as being one of those
epochs. Such also was, although to a considerably lesser degree, the char
acter o f the years preceding the Revolution of 1848. And finally, such, I
believe, is the character of our own epoch, which seems to presage events
that perhaps will transcend those of 1789 and 1793. And is it not true that
all we see and feel in those grand and mighty epochs can be compared to
the spring-tides of the ocean?
T h e Ebbing of the Great Creative Tides of Human History. But
there are other epochs, gloomy, disheartening, and fateful, when every
thing breathes decadence, prostration, and death, and which present a veri
table eclipse of the public and private mind. Those are the ebb tides which
always follow great historic catastrophes. Such was the epoch of the First
Empire and that of the Restoration. Such were the nineteen or twenty
years following the catastrophe of June, 1848. Such will be, to an even
more terrible extent, the twenty or thirty years which will follow the
conquest of France b y the armies of Prussian despotism, that is, if the
workers, if the French people, prove cowardly enough to give up France.14
History 1$ the Gradual Unfoldmeot of Humanity. One can clearly
conceive the gradual development of the material world, as well as o f
organic life and of the historically progressive intelligence o f man, individ
ually or socially. It is an altogether natural movement, from the simple to
the complex, from the lower to the higher, from the inferior to the superior;
a movement in conformity with all of our daily experiences, and conse
quently in conformity also with our natural logic, with the distinctive laws
of our mind, which, being formed and developed only through the aid of
these same experiences are, so to speak, only its mental, cerebral repro
duction or its recapitulation in thought.1
 PA R T II

Criticism o f Existing Society

c h a p t e r i Property Could Arise
Only in the State

The doctrinaire philosophers, as well as the jurists and economists, al

ways assume that property came into existence before the rise o f the State,
whereas it is clear that the juridical idea of property, as well as family law,
could arise historically only in the State, the first inevitable act o f which
was the establishment of this law and o f property.1
Property is a god. This god already has its theology (which is called
State politics and juridical right) and also its morality, the most adequate
expression o f which is summed up in the phrase: This man is worth so
much."
T he Theology and Metaphysics of Property. The property god also
has its metaphysics. It is the science of the bourgeois economists. Like any
metaphysics it is a sort o f twilight, a compromise between truth and false
hood, with the latter benefiting b y it. It seeks to give falsehood the appear
ance of truth and leads truth to falsehood. Political economy seeks to
sanctify property through labor and to represent it as the realization, the
fruit, of labor. If it succeeds in doing this, it will save property and the
bourgeois world. For labor is sacred, and whatever is based upon labor, is
good, just, moral, human, legitimate. Ones faith, however, must be of the
sturdy kind to enable him to swallow this doctrine, for w e see the vast
majority of workers deprived of all property; and what is more, w e have
the avowed statements of the economists and their own scientific proofs
to the effect that under the present economic organization, which they
defend so passionately, the masses will never come to own property; that,
consequently, their labor does not emancipate and ennoble them, for, all
their labor notwithstanding, they are condemned to remain eternally with
out property-thavis, outside of morality and humanity.
Only Non-Productive Labor Yields Property. On the other hand, we
see that the richest property owners, and consequently the most worthy,
humane, moral, and respectable citizens, are precisely those who work the
least or who do not work at all. T o that the answer is made that nowadays
it is impossible to remain richto preserve, and even less so, to increase

*79
 i8o THE P O LITIC A L PH ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

ones wealthwithout working. W ell, let us then agree upon the proper
use of the term work: there is work and work. There is productive labor
and there is the labor o f exploitation.
The first is the labor of the proletariat; the second that of property
owners. He who turns to good account lands cultivated b y someone else,
simply exploits someone elses labor. And he who increases the value o f his
capital, whether in industry or in commerce, exploits the labor of others.
The banks which grow rich as a result of thousands of credit transactions,
the Stock Exchange speculators, the shareholders who get large dividends
without raising a finger; Napoleon III, who became so rich that he was
able to raise to wealth all his protgs; King William I, who, proud of
his victories, is preparing to levy billions upon poor unfortunate France,
and who already has become rich and is enriching his soldiers with this
plunderall those people are workers, but what kind of workers! H ighway
robbers! Thieves and plain ordinary robbers are workers to a much
greater extent, for in order to get rich in their own way they have to
work with their own hands.
It is evident to anyone who is not blind about this matter that pro
ductive work creates wealth and yields the producers only misery, and
that it is only non-productive, exploiting labor that yields property. But
since property is morality, it follows that morality> as the bourgeois under
stands if, consists in exploiting someone elses labor?
Property and Capital Are Labor-Exploiting in T h eir Essence. Is it
necessary to repeat here the irrefutable arguments of Socialism which no
bourgeois economist has yet succeeded in disproving? What is property,
what is capital, in their present form? For the capitalist and the property
owner they mean the power and the right, guaranteed b y the State, to
live without working. And since neither property nor capital produces
anything when not fertilized b y laborthat means the power and the right
to live b y exploiting the work of someone else, the right to exploit the
work of those who possess neither property nor capital and who thus are
forced to sell their productive power to the lucky owners of both.
Property and Capital Are Iniquitous in Their Historic O rigin and
Parasitic in T heir Present Functioning. Note that I have left out o f ac
count altogether the following question: In what w ay did property and
capital ever fall into the hands of their present owners? This is a question
which, when envisaged from the points of view of history, logic, and
justice, cannot be answered in any other w ay but one which would serve
as an indictment against the present owners. I shall therefore confine myself
here to the statement that property owners and capitalists, inasmuch as
they live not by their own productive labor but b y getting land rent, house
rent, interest upon their capital, or b y speculation on land, buildings, and
capital, or b y the commercial and industrial exploitation of the manual
labor of the proletariat, all live at the expense of the proletariat. (Specula
 i Bi Property Could Arise Only in the State
tion and exploitation no doubt also constitute a sort of labor, but altogether
non-productive labor.)
T h e Crucial Test of the Institution of Property. I know only too well
that this mode of life is highly esteemed in all the civilized countries, that
it is expressly and tenderly protected by all the States, and that the States,
religions, and all the juridical laws, both criminal and civil, and all the
political governments, monarchic and republicanwith their immense judi
cial and police apparatuses and their standing armieshave no other mission
but to consecrate and protect such practices. In the presence of these
powerful and respectable authorities I cannot even permit myself to ask
whether this mode o f life is legitimate from the point of view of human
justice, liberty, human equality, and fraternity. I simply ask myself: Under
such conditions, are fraternity and equality possible between the exploiter
and the exploited, are justice and freedom possible for the exploited?
Th e Gap in the Theoretic Vindication of Capitalism. Let us even
suppose, as it is being maintained b y the bourgeois economists and with
them all the lawyers, ail the worshipers of and believers in the juridical
right, all the priests of the civil and criminal codelet us suppose that this
economic relationship between the exploiter and the exploited is altogether
legitimate, that it is the inevitable consequence, the product of an eternal,
indestructible social law, yet still it will always be true that exploitation
precludes brotherhood and equality.
And it goes without saying that such relationship precludes economic
equality.8
Class Monopoly of Means of Production Is a Basic Evil. Can the
emancipation of labor signify any other thing but its deliverance from the
yoke of property and capital? And how can we prevent both from domi
nating and exploiting labor so long as, while separated from labor, they are
monopolized b y a class which, freed from the necessity of working for a
living by virtue o f its exclusive use of capital and property, continues to
oppress labor b y exacting from it land-rent and interest upon capital?
That class, drawing its strength from its monopolistic position, takes pos
session of all the profits of industrial and commercial enterprises, leaving
to the workers, who are crushed by the mutual competition for employ
ment into which they are forced, only that which is barely necessary to
keep them from starving to death.
N o political or juridical law, severe as it may be, can prevent this domi
nation and exploitation^ no law can stand up against the power of this
deeply rooted fact, no one can prevent this situation from producing its
natural results. Hence it follows that so long as property and capital exist
on the one hand, and labor on the other hand, the first constituting the
bourgeois class and the other the proletariat, the worker will be the slave
and the bourgeois the master.
Abolition of Inheritance of Right. But what is it that separates prop-
 182 THE P O LITICA L P H ILO S O P H Y O F B A K U N IN

erty and capital from labor? W hat produces the economic and political
class differences? W hat is it that destroys equality and perpetuates inequal
ity, the privileges of a small number of people, and the slavery of the great
majority? It is the right of inheritance.
So long as the right o f inheritance remains in force, there never will be
economic, social, and political equality in this world; and so long as in
equality exists, oppression and exploitation also will exist.
Consequently, from the point of view of the integral emancipation of
labor and of the workers, we should aim at the abolition of the inheritance
right.
W hat we want to and what w e should abolish is the right to inherit
a right based upon jurisprudence and constituting the very basis o f the
juridical family and the State.
Strictly speaking, inheritance is that which assures to the heirs, whether
completely or only partly so, the possibility of living without working b y
levying a toll upon collective labor, whether it be land rent or interest on
capital. From our point of view, capital as well as land, in a word, all the
instruments and materials necessary for work, in ceasing to be transmissible
b y the law o f inheritance, become forever the collective property o f all
the producers' associations.
O nly at that price is it possible to attain equality and consequently the
emancipation of labor and of the workers.4

c h a p t e r 2 The Present Economic Regime

General Tendencies of Capitalism. Capitalist production and banking

speculation, which in the long run swallows up this production, must cease
lessly expand at the expense of the smaller speculative and productive enter
prises devoured b y them; they must become the sole monopolies, universal
and world-embracing.1
Competition in the economic field destroys and swallows up the small
and even medium-sized capitalist enterprises, factories, land estates, and
commercial houses for the benefit of huge capital holdings, industrial enter
prises, and mercantile firms.2
Growing Concentration of Wealth. This wealth is exclusive and every
day it tends to become increasingly so by concentrating in the hands of an
ever smaller number of persons and by throwing the lower stratum of the
middle class, the petty bourgeoisie, into the ranks of the proletariat, so that
the development of this wealth is directly related to the growing poverty
183 T he Present Economic Regime
of the masses of workers. Hence it follows that the gulf separating the
lucky and privileged minority from the millions of workers who maintain
this minority through their own labor is ever widening and that the luckier
the exploiters o f labor become, the more wretched the great mass of
workers are.3
Proletarianization o f the Peasantry. The small peasant property,
weighed down by debts, mortgages, taxes, and all kinds of levies, melts
away and slips out of the owners hands, helping to round out the ever
growing possessions of the big owners; an inevitable economic law pushes
him in turn into the ranks of the proletariat.4
W hat is property, what is capital, in their present form? For the capital
ist and the property owner they mean the power and the right, guaranteed
by the State, to live without working. And since neither property nor capi
tal produce anything when not fertilized by laborthat means the power
and the right to live b y exploiting the labor o f someone else, the right to
exploit the labor of those who possess neither property nor capital and
who thus are forced to sell their productive power to the lucky owners
o f both. . . .
Exploitation Is the Essence of Capitalism. . . . Let us even suppose,
as it is being maintained by the bourgeois economists,and with them b y
all the lawyers, all the worshipers of and believers in the juridical right,
b y all the priests of the civil and criminal codelet us suppose that this
economic relationship between the exploiter and the exploited is altogether
legitimate, that it is the inevitable consequence, the product, of an eternal,
indestructible social lawand still it will always remain true that exploita
tion precludes brotherhood and equality for the exploited.
Workers Forced to Sell T heir Labor. It goes without saying that it
precludes economic equality. Suppose that I am your worker and you are
my employer. If I offer m y labor at the lowest price, if I consent to have
you live off my labor, it is certainly not because of devotion or brotherly
love for you. And no bourgeois economist would dare to say that it was,
however idyllic and naive their reasoning becomes when they begin to
speak about the reciprocal affections and mutual relations which should
exist between employers and employees. N o, I do it because my family and
I would starve to death if I did not work for an employer. Thus I am
forced to sell you my labor at the lowest possible price, and I am forced
to do it by the threat of hunger.
Selling of Labor PoW r Is Not a Free Transaction. Butthe econ
omists tell usthe property owners, the capitalists, the employers, are like
wise forced to seek out and purchase the labor of the proletariat. Yes, it is
true, they are forced to do it, but not in the same measure. Had there been
equality between those who offer their labor and those who purchase it,
between the necessity of selling ones labor and the necessity of buying it,
the slavery and misery of the proletariat would not exist. But then there
 184 THE PO LITIC A L PH ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

would be neither capitalists, nor property owners, nor the proletariat, nor
rich, nor poor: there would be only workers. It is precisely because such
equality does not exist that we have and are bound to have exploiters.
Growth of the Proletariat Outstrips the Productive Capacity of Capi
talism. This equality does not exist because in modern society where
wealth is produced by the intervention of capital paying wages to labor,
the growth of the population outstrips the growth o f population, which
results in the supply of labor necessarily surpassing the demand and lead
ing to a relative sinking o f the level of wages. Production thus constituted,
monopolized, exploited b y bourgeois capital, is pushed on the one hand
b y the mutual competition of capitalists to concentrate evermore in the
hands of an ever diminishing number of powerful capitalists, or in the
hands o f joint-stock companies which, owing to the merging o f their
capital, are more powerful than the biggest isolated capitalists* (And the
small and medium-sized capitalists, not being able to produce at the same
price as the big capitalists, naturally succumb in this deadly struggle.) On
the other hand, all enterprises are forced b y the same competition to sell
their products at the lowest possible price.
It [capitalistic monopoly] can attain this two-fold result only b y forc
ing out an ever-growing number of small or medium-sized capitalists, spec
ulators, merchants, or industrialists, from the world of the exploiters into
the world of the exploited proletariat, and at the same time squeezing out
ever greater savings from the wages of the same proletariat.
Growing Competition for Jobs Forces Down W age Levels. On the
other hand, the mass of the proletariat, growing as a result of the general
increase of the populationwhich, as we know, not even poverty can stop
effectivelyand through the increasing proletarianization of the petty-
bourgeoisie, ex-owners, capitalists, merchants, and Industrialistsgrowing,
as I have already said, at a much more rapid rate than the productive
capacities of an economy that is exploited by bourgeois capitalthis grow
ing mass o f the proletariat is placed in a condition wherein the workers
themselves are forced into disastrous competition against one another.
For since they possess no other means of existence but their own manual
labor, they are driven, by the fear of seeing themselves replaced by others,
to sell it at the lowest price. This tendency o f the workers, or rather the
necessity to which they are condemned b y their own poverty, combined
with the tendency o f the employers to sell the products of their workers,
and consequently to buy their labor, at the lowest price, constantly repro
duces and consolidates the poverty o f the proletariat. Since he finds him
self in a state o f poverty, the worker is compelled to sell his labor for
almost nothing, and because he sells that product for almost nothing, he
sinks into ever greater poverty.
Intensified Exploitation and Its Consequences. Yes, greater misery,
indeed! For in this galley-slave labor the productive force of the workers,
185 T he Present Economic Regime
abused, ruthlessly exploited, excessively wasted and underfed, is rapidly
used up. And once it is used up, what can be its value on the market, of
what worth is this sole commodity which he possesses and upon the daily
sale of which he depends for a livelihood? Nothing! And then? Then
nothing is left for the worker but to die*
What, in a given country, is the lowest possible wage? It is the price
of that which is considered by the proletarians of that country as abso
lutely necessary to keep oneself alive. A ll the bourgeois economists are in
agreement on this p o in t.. . .
T h e Iron Law of Wages. The current price of primary necessities
constitutes the prevailing constant level above which workers* wages cm
never rise for a very long time, but beneath which they drop very often,
which constantly results in inanition, sickness, and death, until a sufficient
number o f workers disappear to equalize again the supply of and demand
for labor.
There Is No Equality of Bargaining Power Between Employer and
Worker. W hat the economists call equalized supply and demand does not
constitute real equality between those who offer their labor for sale and
those who purchase it. Suppose that I, a manufacturer, need a hundred
workers and that exactly a hundred workers present themselves in the
m arket-only one hundred, for if more came, the supply would exceed the
demand, resulting in lowered wages. But since only one hundred appear,
and since I, the manufacturer, need only that numberneither more nor
lessit would seem at first that complete equality was established; that
supply and demand being equal in number, they should likewise be equal
in other respects.
Does it follow that the workers can demand from me a wage and con
ditions of work assuring them the means of a truly free, dignified, and
human existence? N ot at all! If I grant them those conditions and those
wages, I, the capitalist, shall not gain thereby any more than they will.
But then, w hy should I have to plague myself and become ruined b y
offering them the profits of my capital? If I want to work myself as the
workers do, I will invest my capital somewhere else, wherever I can get
the highest interest, and will offer my labor for sale to some capitalist just
as m y workers do.
If, profiting by the powerful initiative afforded me by my capital, I
ask those hundred workers tpr fertilize that capital with their labor, it is
not because of my sympathy for their sufferings, nor because of a spirit
of justice, nor because of love for humanity. The capitalists are by no
means philanthropists; they would be ruined if they practiced philanthropy.
It is because I hope to draw from the labor of the workers sufficient profit
to be able to live comfortably, even richly, while at the same time increas
ing my capitaland all that without having to work myself. O f course I
shall work too, but my work will be of an altogether different kind, and I
 186 THE P O LITIC A L PH ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

will be remunerated at a much higher rate than the workers. It will not
be the work of production but that of administration and exploitation.
Monopolization of Administrative Work. But isnt administrative
work also productive work? N o doubt it is, for lacking a good and intelli
gent administration, manual labor will not produce anything or it will pro
duce very little and very badly. But from the point of view of justice and
the needs of production itself, it is not at all necessary that this work should
be monopolized in my hands, nor, above all, that I should be compensated
at a rate so much higher than manual labor. The co-operative associations
already have proven that workers are quite capable of administering indus
trial enterprises, that it can be done by workers elected from their midst
and who receive the same wage. Therefore if I concentrate in my hands the
administrative power, it is not because the interests of production demand
it, but in order to serve my own ends, the ends of exploitation. As the
absolute boss of my establishment I get for my labor ten or twenty times
more, and if I am a big industrialist I may get a hundred times more than
my workers get for theirs, and this is true despite the fact that my labor
is incomparably less painful than theirs.6
The Mechanics of the Fictitious Free Labor Contract. But since sup
ply and demand are equal, w h y do the workers accept the conditions
laid down b y the employer? If the capitalist stands in just as great a need
of employing the workers as the one hundred workers do of being em
ployed by him, does it not follow that both sides are in an equal position?
Do not both meet at the market as two equal merchantsfrom the juri
dical point of view at leastone bringing the commodity called a daily
wage, to be exchanged for the daily labor of the worker on the basis o f so
many hours per day; and the other bringing his own labor as his commodity
to be exchanged for the wage offered by the capitalist? Since, in our sup
position, the demand is for a hundred workers and the supply is likewise
that of a hundred persons, it may seem that both sides are in an equal
position.
O f course nothing of the kind is true. W hat is it that brings the capital
ist to the market? It is the urge to get rich, to increase his capital, to gratify
his ambitions and social vanities, to be able to indulge in all conceivable
pleasures. And what brings a worker to the market? Hunger, the necessity
of eating today and tomorrow. Thus, while being equal from the point of
view of juridical fiction, the capitalist and the worker are anything but
equal from the point of view of the economic situation, which is the real
situation.
The capitalist is not threatened with hunger when he comes to the
market; he knows very well that if he does not find today the workers for
whom he is looking, he will still have enough to eat for quite a long time,
owing to the capital of which he is the happy possessor. If the workers
whom he meets in the market present demands which seem excessive to
187 The Present Economic Regime
him, because, far from enabling him to increase his wealth and improve
even more his economic position, those proposals and conditions might, I
do not say equalize, but bring the economic position of the workers some
what close to his ownwhat does he do in that case? He turns down those
proposals and waits.
A fter all, he was not impelled b y an urgent necessity, but b y a desire
to improve a position, which, compared to that of the workers, is already
quite comfortable, and so he can wait. And he will wait, for his business
experience has taught him that the resistance of workers who, possessing
neither capital, nor comfort, nor any savings to speak of, are pressed b y a
relentless necessity, by hunger, that this resistance cannot last very long,
and that finally he will be able to find the hundred workers for whom he
is looking-for they will be forced to accept the conditions which he finds
it profitable to impose upon them. If they refuse, others will come who
will be only too happy to accept such conditions. That is how things are
done daily with the knowledge and in the full view of everyone. . . .
A Master-Slave Contract. . . . The capitalist then comes to the market
in the capacity, if not of an absolutely free agent, at least that o f an infi
nitely freer agent than the worker. W hat happens in the market is a
meeting between a drive for lucre and starvation, between master and
slave. Juridically they are both equal; but economically the worker is the
serf of the capitalist, even before the market transaction has been con
cluded whereby the worker sells his person and his liberty for a given
time. The worker is in the position of a serf because this terrible threat
of starvation which daily hangs over his head and over his family, will
force him to accept any conditions imposed by the gainful calculations o f
the capitalist, the industrialist, the employer.
Juridical Right Versus Economic Reality. And once the contract
has been negotiated, the serfdom of the worker is doubly increased. . . .
M. Karl Marx, the illustrious leader of German Communism, justly
observed in his magnificent work Das Capital that if the contract freely
entered into by the vendors of moneyin the form of wagesand the
vendors of their own laborthat is, between the employer and the
workerswere concluded not for a definite and limited term only, but
for ones whole life, it would constitute real slavery. Concluded for a
term only and reserving to the worker the right to quit his employer, this
contract constitutes a sort of voluntary and transitory serfdom.
Yes, transitory and voluntary from the juridical point of view, but
nowise from the point of view of economic possibility. The worker
always has the right to leave his employer, but has he the means to do so?
And if he does quit him, is it in order to lead a free existence, in which he
will have no master but himself? N o, he does it in order to sell himself to
another employer. He is driven to it by the same hunger which forced
him to sell himself to the first employer.
 188 THE P O LITIC A L P H ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

Thus the worker's liberty, so much exalted by the economists, jurists,

and bourgeois republicans, is only a theoretical freedom, lacking any
means for its possible realization, and consequently it is only a fictitious
liberty, an utter falsehood. The truth is that the whole life of the worker
is simply a continuous and dismaying succession of terms of serfdom -
voluntary from the juridical point o f view but compulsory in the eco
nomic sensebroken up b y momentarily brief interludes o f freedom
accompanied b y starvation; in other words, it is real sjavery.
Labor Contracts Are Observed By the Employer Only in the Breach.
This slavery manifests itself daily in all kinds of ways. Apart from the
vexations and oppressive conditions of the contract which turn the
worker into a subordinate, a passive and obedient servant, and the
employer into a nearly absolute masterapart from all that it is well
known that there is hardly an industrial enterprise wherein the owner,
impelled on one hand b y the two-fold instinct of an unappeasable lust for
profits and absolute power, and on the other hand, profiting by the
economic dependence of the worker, does not set aside the terms stipulated
in the contract and wring some additional concessions in his own favor.
N ow he will demand more hours of work, that is, over and above those
stipulated in the contract; now he will cut down the wages on some
pretext; now he will impose arbitrary fines, or he will treat the workers
harshly, rudely, and insolently.
But, one may say, in that case the worker can quit. Easier said than
done. A t times the worker receives part of his wages in advance, or his
wife or children may be sick, or perhaps his w ork is poorly paid through
out this particular industry. Other employers may be paying even less
than his own employer, and after quitting this job he may not even be
able to find another one. And to remain without a job spells death for him
and his family. In addition, there is an understanding among all the
employers, and all of them resemble one another. A ll are almost equally
irritating, unjust, and harsh.
Is this a calumny? N o, it is in the nature of things, and in the logical
necessity of the relationship existing between the employers and their
workers.

c h a p t e r 3

Citizens and slavessuch was the antagonism existing in the ancient

world as well as in the slave States of the N ew W orld. Citizens and slaves
that is, forced laborers, slaves not by right but in factsuch is the antag
.> 189 Class Struggle in Society Inevitable
onism of the modem world. And just as the ancient States perished from
slavery, so will the modem States perish at the hands of the proletariat.
Clara Differences Are Real Despite the Lack of Clear Demarcations.
In vain would one try to console oneself that this antagonism is fictitious
rather than real, or that it is impossible to lay down a clear line of
demarcation between the possessing and dispossessed classes, since both
merge into each other through many intermediary and imperceptible
shadings. N or for that matter do such lines of demarcation exist in the
natural world; for instance, in the ascending series of beings it is impos
sible to show exactly the point where the plant kingdom ends and the
animal kingdom begins, where bestiality ceases and humanity begins.
Nevertheless, there is a very real difference between a plant and an
animal, and between an animal and man.
It is the same in human society: notwithstanding the intermediary
links which render imperceptible the transition from one political and
social situation to another, the differences between classes is very marked,
and everyone can distinguish the blue-blooded aristocracy from the finan
cial aristocracy, the upper bourgeoisie from the petty-bourgeoisie, and
the latter from the factory and city proletariat-just as we can distinguish
the big land-owner, the rentier, from the peasant who works his own land,
and the fanner from the ordinary land proletarian (the hired farm-hand.)
Basic Clara Difference. A ll these different political and social group
ings can now be reduced to two principal categories, diametrically opposed
and naturally hostile to each other: the privileged classes, comprising ail
those who are privileged with respect to possession of land, capital, or even
only of bourgeois education, and the working classes, disinherited with
respect to land as well as capital, and deprived o f all education and
instruction.1
Class Struggle in Existing Society Is Irreconcilable. The antagonism
existing between the bourgeois world and that o f the workers takes on an
ever more pronounced character. Every serious-minded man, whose feel
ings and imagination are not distorted by the influence, often uncon
scious, of biased sophisms, must^realize that no reconciliation between
these two worlds is possible. TKe workers want equality and the bour
geoisie wants to maintain inequality. Obviously one destroys the other.
Therefore the great majority of bourgeois capitalists and property-owners
who have the courage frankly to avow their wishes manifest with the
same candor the horror which the present labor movement inspires in
them. T h ey are resolute and sincere enemies; we know them and it is well
that we do.2
It is clear now that there can be no reconciliation between the fierce,
starving proletariat, moved by social-revolutionary passions and persistently
aiming to create another world upon the foundation of the principles of
truth, justice, freedom, equality, and human brotherhood (principles
 I90 THE P O LITICA L PH ILO S O P H Y O F B A K U N IN

tolerated in respectable society only as an innocent subject for rhetorical

exercises) and the enlightened and educated world o f privileged classes
defending with desperate vigor the political, juridical, metaphysical,
theological, and military regime as the last fortress guarding the precious
privilege of economic exploitation. Between these tw o worlds, I say,
between the plain working people and educated society (combining in
itself, as w e know, all the excellences, beauty, and virtues) no reconcilia
tion is possible.3
Class Struggle in Terms of Progress and Reaction. O nly two real
forces have been left by now: the party of the past, of reaction, com
prising all the possessing and privileged classes and now taking shelter,
often outspokenly, under the banner of military dictatorship or the author
ity of the State; and the party of the future, the party o f integral human
emancipation, the party of revolutionary Socialism, of the proletariat.4
One must be a sophist or utterly blind to deny the existence of the
abyss which today separates these two classes. A s in the ancient world,
our modem civilization, comprising a comparatively limited minority of
privileged citizens, has for its basis the forced labor (forced by hunger)
of the vast majority of the population, inevitably doomed to ignorance and
brutality. . . .
Free Trade Is No Solution. It is in vain that one may say with the
economists that the betterment o f the economic situation of the working
classes depends upon the general progress of industry and commerce in
every country and their complete emancipation from the tutelage and
protection of the State. Freedom of industry and commerce is o f course a
great thing, and is one of the basic foundations for the future international
union o f all the peoples of the world. Being friends of liberty at any price,
and of all liberties, we should be equally the friends of those liberties as
well. But, on the other hand, we must recognize that so long as the present
States exist and so long as labor continues to be the serf of property and
capital, this liberty, b y enriching a very small section of the bourgeoisie
at the expense of the vast majority of the population, will produce one
good result: It will enervate and demoralize more completely the small
number of privileged people, will increase the poverty, the resentment,
and the just indignation o f the working masses, and thereby will bring
nearer the hour of destruction of the States.
Free-Trade Capitalism Is Fertile Soil for the Growth of Pauperism.
England, Belgium, France, and Germany are certainly those countries in
Europe where commerce and industry enjoy comparatively the greatest
freedom, and where they have attained the highest degree o f development.
And likewise those are precisely the countries where pauperism is felt in
the most cruel manner, and where the gulf between the capitalists and
property-owners on one hand and the working classes on the other appears
to have widened to an extent unknown in other countries.8
191 Class Struggle in Society Inevitable
T h e Labor of the Privileged Classes. Thus we are compelled to
recognize as a general rule that in the modem world, if not to the same
degree as in the ancient world, the civilization of a small number is still
based upon the forced labor and comparative barbarism of the great
majority. Yet it would be unjust to say that this privileged class is alto
gether alien to work; on the contrary, in our day many of its members
work hard. The number o f absolutely unoccupied persons is perceptibly
decreasing, and work is beginning to elicit respect in those circles; for the
most fortunate members of society are beginning to understand that in
order to remain at the high level of the present civilization, in order at
least to be able to profit b y their privileges and to safeguard them, one has
to work a great deal.
But there is a difference between the work of the well-to-do classes
and that of the workers: the first, being paid for at a rate proportionately
much higher than the second, gives leisure to the privileged people, that
supreme condition of all human development, intellectual as well as moral
a condition never yet enjoyed b y the laboring classes. And then the
work of the privileged people is almost exclusively of the nervous kind,
that is, of imagination, memory, and thoughtwhere as the work of
the millions o f proletarians is of the muscular kind; and often, as
in the case of factory work, it does not exercise mans whole system but
develops only one part of him to the detriment of all the other parts, and
it is generally done under conditions which are harmful to bodily health
and which militate against his harmonious development.
In this respect, the worker on the land is much more fortunate: free
from the vitiating effect of the stuffy and frequently poisoned air o f
factories and workshops, and free from the deforming effect of an
abnormal development of some of his powers at the expense o f others,
his nature remains more vigorous and completebut in return, his intel
ligence is nearly always more stationary, sluggish, and much less developed
than that o f the factory and city proletariat.
Respective Rewards of the Tw o Kinds of Labor. Altogether artisans,
factory workers, and farm-laborers form one and the same category, that
of muscular work, and are opposed to the privileged representatives o f
nervous work. W hat is the consequence o f this quite real division which
constitutes the very basis of the present situation, political as well as social?
T o the privileged representatives of nervous work, who, incidentally,
arc called upon, in the present organization of society, to carry on this
type o f work, not because they are more intelligent but only because they
were bom into a privileged classto them go all the benefits, but also all
the corruptions of existing civilization. T o them go wealth, luxury, com
fort, well-being, family joys, exclusive enjoyment of political liberty with
i lie power to exploit the w ork of millions of workers and to govern them
at will and in their own interestall the creations, all the refinements of
 192 THE P O LITIC A L P H ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

imagination and th ou gh t. . . and with this power to become complete men

all the poisons of a humanity perverted by privilege.
And what is left for the representatives of muscular work, for the
countless millions of proletarians or even small land-owners? Inescapable
poverty, lack of even the joys of family life (for the family soon becomes
a burden to the poor man), ignorance, barbarism, and we might almost
say, forced bestiality, with the consolation that they serve as a pedestal
for civilization, for liberty, and for the corruption o f a small minority.
But in return, they have preserved freshness o f mind and heart. Morally
invigorated by work, even though it has been forced upon them, they
have retained a sense of justice o f an altogether higher kind than the
justice of learned jurists and of the law codes. Living a life of misery, they
have a warm feeling of compassion for all the unfortunate; they have
preserved sound sense uncorrupted by the sophisms of a doctrinaire
science or b y the falsehoods of politicsand since they have not abused
life, nor even made use of life, they have retained their faith in it.
T h e Change in the Situation Wrought By the Great French Rev
olution. But, w e are told, this contrast, this gulf between the privileged
minority and the vast number of disinherited has always existed and
continues to exist. Then what kind of change did take piace? W hat
changed was that in the past this gulf had been enveloped in thick
religious mist so that the masses of people could not descry it; but that
after the Great Revolution had begun to dispel this mist, the masses
became aware of the gulf and began to ask the reason for its existence.
The significance of that change is immense.
From the time when the Revolution brought down to the masses its
Gospelnot the mystic but the rational, not the heavenly but the earthly,
not the divine but the human Gospel, the Gospel o f the Rights o f Man
ever since it proclaimed that all men are equal, that all men are entitled to
liberty and equality, the masses o f all European countries, o f all the
civilized world, awakening gradually from the sleep which had kept
them in bondage ever since Christianity drugged them with its opium,
began to ask themselves whether they too had the right to equality,
freedom, and humanity.
Socialism Is the Logical Consequence of the Dynamics of the French
Revolution. A s soon as this question was posed, the people, guided by
their admirable sound sense as well as b y their instincts, realized that the
first condition of their real emancipation, or o f their humanization, was a
radical change in their economic condition. The question of daily bread
was to them justly the first question, for, as Aristotle long ago had noted,
man, in order to think, in order to feel himself free, in order to become
a man, has to be liberated from the preoccupations o f the material life.
For that matter, the bourgeois, who are so vociferous in their attacks
against the materialism of the people and who preach to the latter the
* 93 Class Struggle in Society Inevitable
uhstinences of idealism, know it very well, for they themselves preach it
only by word and not by example.
The second question for the people was leisure after workan indis
pensable condition for humanity. But bread and leisure never can be
u! rained apart from a radical transformation of the present organization
of society, and that explains w hy the Revolution, driven on by the
implications of its own principle, gave birth to Socialism.6

c h a p t e r 4 Checkered History
o f the Bourgeoisie

There was a time when the bourgeoisie, endowed with vital power
and constituting the only historic class, offered the spectacle of union and
fraternity, in its acts as well as in its thoughts. That was the finest period
in the life of that class, no doubt always respectable but thereafter an
impotent, stupid, and sterile class; that was the epoch of its most vigorous
development. Such it was prior to the Great Revolution of 1793; such it
also was though to a much lesser degree before the revolutions of 1830
and 1848. Then the bourgeoisie had a world to conquer, it had to take
its place in society, and, organized for struggle, and intelligent, audacious,
and feeling itself stronger than anyone else in point of right, it was
endowed with an irresistible, almighty power. Alone it engendered three
revolutions against the united power of the monarchy, the nobility, and
the clergy.
Freemasonry: the International of the ^Bourgeoisie in Its Heroic Past.
A t that time the bourgeoisie also created a universal, formidable, interna
tional association: Freemasonry.
It would be a great mistake to judge the Freemasonry of the last cen
tury or even that of the beginning of the present century, by what it
represents now. Pre-eminently a bourgeois institution, Freemasonry
reflected in its history the development, the growing power, and the
decadence of the intellectual and moral bourgeoisie. . . . Prior to 1793 and
even before 1830 Freemasonry united in its midst, with few exceptions,
all the chosen spirits, the most ardent hearts and most daring wills; it
constituted an active, powerful, and truly beneficent organization. It was
the vigorous embodiment and the practical realization of the humanitarian
idea of the eighteenth century. A ll the great principles of liberty, equality,
 194 THE P O LITIC A L PH ILO S O P H Y O F B A K U N IN

fraternity, reason, and human justice, worked out at first theoretically by

the philosophy of the century, became within Freemasonry practical dog
mas and the bases of a new morality and politicsthey became the soul
of a gigantic work of demolition and reconstruction. . . .
Decay of Freemasonry. The triumph of the Revolution killed Free
masonry; for, having seen its wishes partly fulfilled b y the Revolution,
and having taken, as a result of the latter, the place of the nobility, the
bourgeoisie, after being for a long time an exploited and oppressed class,
became in turn a privileged, exploiting, oppressing conservative, and reac
tionary class. . . . Following the coup detat of Napoleon I, Freemasonry
became an imperial institution throughout the greater part of the Euro
pean continent.
T h e Epigone of Bourgeois Revolutionism. T o some extent the Resto
ration revived it. Seeing itself threatened by the return of the old regime,
and forced to yield to the nobility and the Church coalition the place
which it had won through the first Revolution, the bourgeoisie again
became revolutionary b y force of necessity. But what a difference between
this warmed-up revolutionism and the ardent and powerful revolutionism
which had inspired it toward the end of the last century. Then the bour
geoisie was sincere, it seriously and naively believed in the rights of man,
it was inspired and driven on by a genius for destruction and reconstruc
tion. And at that time the bourgeoisie found itself in full possession of
its intelligence and in full development of its power.
It did not yet suspect that a gulf separated it from the people; it
believed and felt itself to beand for that matter it really wasthe real
representative of the people. The Thermidorian reaction and the Babeuf
conspiracy cured it of this illusion. The gulf separating the working people
from the exploiting, dominating, and prosperous bourgeoisie has widened
ever more, and now nothing less than the dead body of the whole bour
geoisie, and its entire privileged existence, will ever be able to fill up this
gulf.1
Class Antagonism Displaced the Bourgeoisie from Its Revolutionary
Position as Leader of the People. The bourgeoisie of the last century
sincerely believed that by emancipating themselves from the monarchistic,
clerical, and feudal yoke, they would thereby emancipate the whole people.
And this sincere but naive belief was the source of their heroic daring and
of all their marvelous power. T h ey felt themselves united with everyone,
and they marched to the assault carrying within themselves the power and
right for everybody. Owing to this right and this power which were, so
to speak, embodied in their class, the bourgeois of the last century could
scale and take the fortress of political power which their fathers had
coveted for so many centuries.
But at the very moment when they had planted their banner there, a
new light struck their minds. As soon as they had won that power, they
 95 Checkered History of the Bourgeoisie
realized that there actually was nothing in common between the interests
of the bourgeoisie and those of the great masses of people, but that, on
the contrary, they were radically opposed to each other, and that the
power and the exclusive prosperity of the possessing class could rest only
upon the poverty and the political and social dependence of the proletariat.
A fter that the relations between the bourgeoisie and the people
changed radically, but before the workers had realized that the bourgeois
were their natural enemies, from necessity rather than from a wicked will,
the bourgeoisie had become aware of this inevitable antagonism. It is this
that I call the bad conscience of the bourgeoisie.2
Flight From the Revolutionary Past. N o w it is altogether different:
the bourgeoisie, in all the countries of Europe, is most o f all afraid of the
Social Revolution; it knows that against this storm it has no other refuge
but the State. That is w hy it always desires and demands a strong State,
or, in plain language, a military dictatorship. And in order the easier to
bamboozle the masses o f the people, it aims to invest this dictatorship with
the forms of a popular representative government which would allow it
to exploit the great masses o f the people in the name of the people itself *
T h e Upper Bourgeoisie. .. In the upper layers of the bourgeoisie,
following the consolidation of the unity of the State, there has come into
existence and now is developing and expanding to an ever greater extent
the social unity o f the privileged exploiters of the labor of the working
people.
This class [the upper bourgeoisie] comprises the high officialdom, the
spheres of high bureaucracy, military officers, high police officials, and
judges; the world o f large owners, industrialists, merchants, and bankers;
the official legal world and the press; and likewise the Parliament, the
right wing of which already enjoys all the benefits of government, whereas
the left wing aims to take into its own hands the very same government.4
T h e Petty-Bourgeoisie. W e realize quite well that even among the
bourgeoisie knowledge is not equally distributed. Here too there is a
hierarchy conditioned not b y the capacity of the individuals therein, but
by the relative wealth of the social layer to which they belong by birth.
Thus, for instance, the education received by the children of the petty-
bourgeoisie, just slightly above that of the education of workers chil
dren, is insignificant when compared to the education received b y the
children of the upper and middle bourgeoisie. And what do we see? The
j tty-bourgeoisie, which ranks itself with the middle classes because o f a
ridiculous vanity on the one hand, and on the other because of its depend
ence upon the big capitalists, finds itself most of the time in an even more
miserable and more humiliating position than that of the proletariat.
Therefore when we speak of privileged classes we do not mean thereby
this miserable petty-bourgeoisie, which, if it had more courage and more
intelligence, would not fail to join us in order jointly to struggle against
 196 THE P O LITIC A L PH ILO S O P H Y O F B A K U N IN

the big bourgeoisie, which crushes it no less than it crushes the proletariat.
And if the economic development of society is going to proceed in the
same direction for another ten years, we shall see the greater part of the
middle bourgeoisie sunk at first into the present position of the petty-
bourgeoisie, and then gradually lose themselves in the rank of the prole
tariat, all this taking place as the result o f the same inevitable concentration
o f property in the hands o f an ever smaller number of people, necessarily
entailing the division of the social world into a small, very rich, learned,
and ruling minority, and the vast majority o f miserable, ignorant prole
tarians and slaves.
Technical Progress Benefits Only the Bourgeoisie. There is a fact
which should strike all conscientious people, all those who have at heart
human dignity and justice; that is, the freedom o f everyone in equality for
all. This notable fact is that all the inventions of the mind, all the great
applications o f science to industry, to commerce, and generally to social
life, have benefited up to now only the privileged classes and the power
of the States, those eternal protectors of political and social iniquities, and
they have never benefited the masses of the people. W e need only point
to machinery b y way of an illustration, to have every worker and every
sincere partisan of emancipation for labor agree with us on that score.
T h e State a Bourgeois-Controlled Institution. W hat power now
sustains the privileged classes, with all their insolent well-being and
iniquitous enjoyments of life, against the legitimate indignation of the
masses of the people? That power is the power o f the State, in which their
children are holding, as they always have held, all the dominant positions,
and the middle and lower positions, except those of laborers and soldiers.8
Administration of the Economy in Place of the State. The bour
geoisie is the dominant and exclusively intelligent class because it exploits
the people and keeps it in a state of starvation. If the people become
prosperous and as learned as the bourgeoisie, the domination o f the latter
must come to an end; and there will be no more room for political govern
ment, such government changing then into a simple apparatus for the
administration of the economy.6
Moral and Intellectual Decay of the Bourgeoisie. The educated clas
ses, the nobility, the bourgeoisie, who at one time flourished and stood
at the head of a living and progressive civilization throughout Europe, now
have sunk into torpor and have become vulgarized, obese, and cowardly,
so much so that if they represent anything it is the most deleterious and
vile attributes of mans nature. W e see that these classes in a highly moral
country like France are not even capable of defending the independence
of their own country against Germans. And in Germany we see that all
these classes are capable of is boot-licking loyalty to their Kaiser.7
N o bourgeois, even of the reddest kind, wants to have economic
equality, for that kind o f equality would spell his death.
 197 Checkered History o f the Bourgeoisie
The bourgeoisie do not see and do not understand anything lying
outside of the State and the regulating powers o f the State. The height of
their ideal, of their imagination and heroism, is the revolutionary exag
geration of the power and action of the State in the name of public
safety,
Death Agony of a Historically Condemned Class. This class, as a
political and social organism, after having rendered outstanding services
to the civilization of the modem world, is now condemned to death by
history itself. T o die is the only service which it may still render to
humanity, which it served during its life. But it does not want to die. And
this reluctance to die is the only cause o f its present stupidity and that
shameful impotence now characterizing everyone o f its political, national,
and international enterprises.10
Is the Bourgeoisie Altogether Bankrupt? Has the bourgeoisie already
become bankrupt? N ot yet. O r has it lost the taste for liberty and peace?
Not at all. It still continues to love liberty, with the condition, of course,
that this liberty exist for the bourgeoisie only; that is, that the latter
retain the liberty to exploit the slavery of the masses, who, while posses
sing, under existing constitutions, the right to liberty but not the means
to enjoy it, remain forcibly enslaved under the yoke of the bourgeoisie.
As for peace, never did the bourgeoisie feel so much the need thereof as
it does today. Armed peace, which weighs down heavily upon the Euro
pean world, disturbs, paralyzes, and ruins the bourgeoisie.11
Bourgeois Reaction Against M ilitary Dictatorship. A large part of
the bourgeoisie is tired o f the reign o f Caesarism and militarism, which it
founded in 1848 because of its fear of the proletariat. . . .
There is no doubt that the bourgeoisie on the whole, including the
radical bourgeoisie, was not, in the proper sense o f the word, the creator
of Caesarian and military despotism, the effects o f which it already has
come to deplore. Having availed itself of this dictatorship in its struggle
against the proletariat, it now evinces the desire to get rid of it. Nothing
is more natural: this regime humiliates ancbTuins it. But how can it get
rid of this dictatorship? A t one time it was courageous and powerful; it
had the power to conquer worlds. N ow it is cowardly and weak, and
afflicted with the impotence of old age. It is keenly aware of this feebleness,
and it feels that it alone cannot do anything. It needs assistance. This
assistance can be rendered only by the proletariat, and that is w hy it feels
that the latter must be won over to its side.
The Liberal Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat. But how can the pro
letariat be won over? B y promises of liberty and political equality? No,
those are words which do not touch the workers any more. T h ey have
learned, at their own cost, they have realized through their own harsh
experience, that these words mean only the preservation of their economic
slavery, often more harsh than what has gone before. . . . If you want to
 198 THE P O LITIC A L P H ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

touch the hearts of those wretched millions o f slaves of work, talk to

them about their economic emancipation. There are hardly any workers
now who do not realize that this is the only serious and real basis of all
the other emancipations. Therefore they have to be approached from the
point of view of economic reforms of society.
Bourgeois Socialism. W ell, then, the members of the League for
Peace and Liberty will tell themselves, let us also call ourselves Socialists.
Let us promise them economic and social reforms, but on the condition
that they respect the bases o f civilization and bourgeois omnipotence:
individual and hereditary property, interest on capital, and land rent. Let
us persuade them that it is only upon these conditions, which incidentally
assure our domination and the slavery o f the proletariat, that the workers
can be emancipated.
Let us also convince them that in order to carry out those social
reforms it is necessary first to have a good political revolution, exclusively
political, and as red as they want to make it in the political sense, with a
lot o f head-choppingif that becomes necessarybut with an even greater
respect for sacrosanct property. In short, a purely Jacobin revolution which
will render us the masters of the situation; and once we become masters,
we shall give the workers what we can and want to give them.
Distinguishing Marks of a Bourgeois Socialist. Here we have the
infallible sign b y which workers can detect a false Socialist, a bourgeois
Socialist. If, in speaking to them of revolution, or, if you please, of social
transformation, he tells them that political transformation should precede
the economic transformation; if he denies that both have to be made at
the same time, or holds that the political revolution has to be something
apart from the immediate and direct carrying out of full and complete
social liquidationthe workers should turn their backs upon him: for the
one who speaks thus is either a fool or a hypocritical exploiter.12
The Buorgeoisie Has N o Faith in the Future. W hat is very remark
able and what, besides, has been observed and established b y a great num
ber of writers of various tendencies, is that now only the proletariat
possesses a constructive ideal toward which it aspires with the still virginal
passion o f its whole being. It sees ahead of it a star, a sun which illumines
and already warms it (at least in its imagination) in its faith, and which
shows it with a certain clarity the road to be followed, whereas all the
privileged and so-called enlightened classes find themselves plunged at the
same time into a frightful and desolating darkness.
The latter see nothing ahead of them, they do not believe in or aspire
to anything but the everlasting preservation of the status quo, recognizing
at the same time that this status quo has no value at all. Nothing proves
better that these classes are condemned to die and that the future belongs
to the proletariat. It is the barbarians (the proletarians) who now repre
sent faith in human destiny and the future of civilization, whereas the
 1 99 Proletariat Long Enslaved
civilized people find their salvation only in barbarism: the massacre of
the Communards and return to the Pope. Such are the final two behests of
the privileged civilization.13

c h a p t e r 5 Proletariat Long Enslaved

A t first men devoured one another like wild beasts. Then the cleverest
and the strongest began to enslave the other people. Later the slaves became
serfs. And at a still later stage, the serfs became free wage-slaves.1
The Proletariat Is a Class of Well-Defined Characteristics. The city
proletariat and the peasantry constitute the real people, the former, o f
course, being more advanced than the peasants. The proletariat . . . con
stitutes a very unfortunate, very much oppressed class, but at the same
rime one that has dearly marked characteristics of its own. A s a definite,
well marked-off class, it is subject to the workings of a historic and inevi
table law which determines the career and the durability of every class in
accordance with what it has done and how it has lived in the past. Col
lective individualities, all classes, exhaust themselves in the long run just
as individuals do.2
Economic Crises and the Proletariat. In countries with highly devel
oped industries, particularly England, France, Belgium, and Germany, ever
since the introduction of improved machinery and the application of steam
power in industry, and ever since large-scale factory production came into
existence, commercial crises became inevitable, recurring at ever more fre
quent periodic intervals. Where industry has flourished to the greatest
extent, workers have been faced with the periodic threat of starving to
death. Naturally this gave birth to labor crises, !35 or movements, and
labor strikes, at first in England (in the Twenties of this nineteenth cen
tury), then in France (in the Thirties), and finally in Germany and Bel
gium (in the Forties). The wide-spread distress, and the general cause of
that distress, created powerful associations in those countries, at first only
local, for mutual aid, mutual defense, and mutual struggle.3
Proletarian Internationalism. The city and factory proletariat, al
though attached b y their poverty, like slaves, to the locality where they
have to work, have no local interests because they have no property. A ll
(heir interests are of a general character: they are not even national, but
rather international. For the question of work and wages, the only question
which interests them directly, actually, and vividly, an everyday question
which has become the center and the basis of all other questions--social as
 200 THE P O LITIC A L P H ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

well as political and religioustends now to take on, b y the simple devel
opment of the almighty power of capital in industry and commerce, an
unconditionally international character. It is this that explains the marvelous
growth of the International Workingmens Association, an association
which, though founded less than six years ago, already counts in Europe
alone more than a million members.4
Aristocracy of Labor. In every country, among the millions o f un
skilled workers, there is a layer of more developed, literate individuals con
stituting therefore a sort of aristocracy among the workers. This labor
aristocracy is divided into two categories, of which one is highly useful
and the other quite harmful.
Handicraft a Holdover from Medieval Age. Let us begin with the
harmful category. It consists pre-eminently and almost exclusively not of
factory workers but of artisans. W e know that the situation of the artisans
in Europe, though hardly to be envied, is still incomparably better than
that of the factory workers. The artisans are exploited not by big but b y
small capital, which lacks by far the power to oppress and humiliate
workers to the extent possessed b y the vast aggregations of capital in the
industrial world. The world of artisans, of handicraft and not machine
work, is a vestige of the medieval economic structure. More and more it is
being dislodged under the irresistible pressure of large-scale factory pro
duction, which naturally aims to get hold of all the branches o f industry.
But where handicraft does persist, the workers occupied in it live much
better: and the relations between the not over-wealthy employers, who
themselves sprang from the working class, and their workers are more
intimate, more simple and patriarchal than in the world of factory pro
duction. Among the artisans, then, one finds many semi-bourgeois, b y
their habits and convictions, hoping and aiming, consciously or uncon
sciously, to become one hundred per cent bourgeois.
But craftsmen themselves are subdivided into three categories. The
largest and least aristocratic categorythat is, the least fortunate of all of
them in the bourgeois sensecomprises all the least skilled and the crudest
crafts (like blacksmithing, for instance), which demand considerable physi
cal power. Workers belonging to this category, by their tendencies and
convictions, stand nearer than others to factory workers. And in their
midst valuable revolutionary instincts are preserved and are being devel
oped. One frequently finds among them persons who are capable of com
prehending, in all their scope and implications, the problems involved in
the universal emancipation of the workers.
There is a middle category, comprising such trades as joiners, printers,
tailors, shoemakers, and many other similar handicrafts, which require a
certain degree of education and special knowledge, or at least less physical
exertion, and therefore leave more time for thinking. Among these workers
there is comparatively more well-being and accordingly more bourgeois
 201 Proletariat Long Enslaved
smugness. Their revolutionary instincts are considerably weaker than in
the first relatively unskilled category. But on the other hand one meets
here a greater number of men who think and reason, though rather errati
cally at times, and whose convictions are consciously arrived at. A t the
same time this category contains a goodly portion of hair-splitters incapable
of action because of their proneness for idle talk, and sometimes, under
the influence of vanity and personal ambitions, even consciously blocking
such action.
T h e Semi-Bourgeois Category. And, finally, there is a third category
of hand trades producing luxury commodities and therefore tied up by
their own interests with the existence and preservation of the well-to-do
bourgeois world. Most of the workers belonging to this environment are
almost completely permeated with bourgeois passions, bourgeois conceit,
bourgeois prejudices. Fortunately, in the general mass of workers, these
constitute only an insignificant minority. But where they do predominate,
international propaganda moves very slowly and frequently takes on a
clearly anti-social, purely bourgeois tendency. In these circles we see pre
dominating the craving for an exclusively personal happiness, for individual
that is, bourgeoisself-promotion, and not for collective emancipation
and happiness.
The wages of this category of workers are incomparably higher, their
work being at the same time more of the white-collar type, lighter, cleaner,
more respectable than in the first two categories. That is w h y there is
more well-being, more rudimentary schooling, self-conceit, and vanity
among them. T h ey become Socialists only during commercial crises which,
because of the concomitant slump in wages, remind them that they are
not bourgeois but only day-laborers.
Bourgeois Socialism Finds Its Support Among Workers of the T h ird
Category. It stands to reason that during the last ten years, when the
peaceful co-operative system was still in the hey-day o f its high-blown
dreams and expectations, bourgeois Socialism found its principal support
not in the world of factoiy workers but in that of artisans and mainly in
the last two categoriesthe most privileged and the nearest to the bourgeois
world. The universal failure of the co-operative system was a beneficent
lesson to the detrimental workers aristocracy.
T h e T ru e Labor Aristocracy: the Revolutionary Vanguard. But along
with the latter there also exists an aristocracy of a different kind, a bene
ficial and useful aristocracy; an aristocracy not by virtue of position but
by that o f conviction of revolutionary class-consciousness and of rational,
energetic passion and will. Workers who belong to this category are the
most thorough enemies of every aristocracy and every privilegethat of
the nobility, the bourgeoisie, and even that of some workers groups. They
can be called aristocrats only in the most literal or original meaning of the
word, in the sense of being the best people. And indeed they are the best
 202 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

people, not only among the working class but in society as a whole. They
combine in themselves, in their comprehension o f the social problem, all
the advantages of free and independent thought, of scientific views com
bined with the sincerity of a sound folk-instinct.
T h ey would find it quite easy to rise above their own class, to become
members of the bourgeois caste, and to rise from the ranks of the ignorant,
exploited, and enslaved people into those of the fortunate coterie of ex
ploitersbut the desire for that kind of personal advancement is foreign
to them. They are permeated with the passion for solidarity, and they do
not understand any other liberty and happiness but that which can be
enjoyed together with all the millions of their enslaved human brothers.
And it stands to reason that those men enjoy a great and fascinating, al
though unsought, influence over the masses of workers. Add to this cate
gory of workers those who have broken away from the bourgeois class,
and who have given themselves to the great cause of emancipation of
labor, and you get what we call the useful and beneficent aristocracy in
the international labor movement.5
Proletarian Humanism Tempered by Sound Sense. If true human
feelings, so greatly debased and falsified in our days by official hypocrisy
and bourgeois sentimentality, are still preserved anywhere, it is only among
the workers. For the workers constitute the only class in existing society
of whom one might say that it is really generous, too generous at times,
and too forgetful of the atrocious crimes and odious betrayals of which it
is frequently the victim. The proletariat is incapable of cruelty. But at
the same time the proletariat is actuated by a realistic instinct which
leads it straight toward the right goal, and b y common sense which
tells it that if it wants to put an end to evil-doing, it must first curb and
paralyze the evil-doers.
A n Irrepressible Class. There is no power now in the world, there is
no political nor religious means in existence, which can stop, among the
proletariat of any country, and especially among the French proletariat,
the drive toward economic emancipation and toward social equality.7
The great mass of unskilled workers in Italy, as well as in other
countries, constitute in themselves the whole life, the power, and the future
of existing society. Only a few persons from the bourgeois world have
joined the workers, only those who have come to hate with all their souls
the present political economic, and social order, who have turned their
backs upon the class from which they sprang, and who have devoted all
their energies to the cause o f the people. Those persons are few and far
between, but they are highly valuable, provided, of course, that they have
stifled within themselves all personal ambition; in which case, I repeat,
they are indeed highly valuable. The people give them life, elementary
strength, and a soil from which they draw their sustenance, and in return
they bring their positive knowledge, the power of abstraction and general-
 203 Proletariat Long Enslaved
izarion, and organizational abilities, to be used in organizing labor unions,
which in turn create the conscious fighting force without which no victory
is possible.8
Possible Allies of the Proletariat. Deep as our scorn is for the mod
ern bourgeoisie, with all the antipathy and distrust which it inspires within
us, there are still two categories within this class with regard to whom we
do not give up the hope, of seeing them, in part at least, become converted
sooner or later by Socialist propaganda to the peoples cause. One of them,
driven on by the force o f circumstances and the necessities of its own
actual position, and the other b y a generous temperament, they are without
doubt bound to take part with us in wiping out existing iniquities and
in the building of a new world.
W e are referring to the petty-bourgeoisie and to the youth in the
schools and universities.

C H A P T E R 6 Peasants Day is Yet to Came

The peasants in almost all the countries of Western Europewith the

exception o f England and Scotland, where peasants in the proper sense of
the word do not exist, and with the exception of Ireland, Italy, and Spain,
where they are poverty-stricken, and where they are revolutionary and
Socialists without even being aware o f itoutside o f these countries the
peasants o f Western Europe, especially those of France and Germany, are
semi-content with their position.
T h ey enjoy, or believe they enjoy, certain advantages, and they-rmagine
that it would be to their interest to preserve those advantages against the
attacks of a social revolution. They have, if not the real profits o f prop
erty, at least a vain-glorious dream about it. Besides, they are kept system
atically in crass ignorance by governments and all the official and officious
State churches. The peasants constitute the principal, almost sole, founda
tion upon which the safety and power of the State now rest. Therefore
they have become the object of especial solicitude on the part of all gov
ernments. And the peasant mind is being worked upon by all the govern
mental and church agencies, who try to cultivate within that mind the
tender flowers of Christian faith and loyalty to the reigning monarchs, and
to sow salutary seeds of hatred for the city.
Peasants Are a Potentially Revolutionary Class. Yet in spite o f all
that the peasants can be stirred into action, and sooner or later they will
be so stirred b y the Social Revolution. This is true for three reasons:
 204 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N I N
1. Owing to their backward or relatively barbarous civilization, they have
retained in all their integrity the simple, robust temperament and the energy
germane to the folk nature. 2. They live from the labor of their hands,
and are morally conditioned by this labor, which fosters within them an
instinctive hatred for all privileged parasites of the State, and for all
exploiters of labor. 3. Finally, being toilers themselves, they share common
interests with city workers, from whom they are separated only by their
prejudices.
A Workers-Peasants Revolution Under the Leadership of the Pro*
letariat. A great, truly Socialist and revolutionary movement may at first
startle them, but their instinct and their native common sense will soon
make them realize that the Social Revolution does not aim to despoil them
of what they have, but to lead to the triumph everywhere and for every
one, of the sacred right o f work, a right to be established upon the ruins
of privileged parasitism. And when the [industrial] workers, inspired b y
revolutionary passion, and abandoning the pretentious and scholastic lan
guage of a doctrinaire Socialism, come to tell them simply, without any
evasions or phrase-mongering, what they want; when they come to the
villages not as schoolmasters but as brothers and as equals, provoking the
revolution but not imposing it upon the toilers on the land; when they
have consigned to flames all the writs, lawsuits, property deeds and rents,
private debts, mortgages, and criminal and civil laws; when they have
made a bonfire of all these immense heaps of red tapethe sign and official
consecration of the poverty and slavery of the proletariatwhen the work
ers have done all these things, then, rest assured, the peasants will under
stand them and will rise together with them.
But in order that the peasants rise in rebellion, it is absolutely necessary
that the city workers take upon themselves the initiative in this revolu
tionary movement, because it is only the city workers who today unite in
themselves the instinct, the clear consciousness, the idea, and the conscious
will of the Social Revolution. Consequently, the whole danger threatening
the existence of the States is now mainly centered in the city proletariat.1
The Peasantry and the Communists. T o the Communists, or Social
Democrats, o f Germany, the peasantry, any peasantry, stands for reaction;
and the State, any State, even the Bismarckian State, stands for revolution.
Far be it from us to traduce the German Social Democrats in this matter.
W e have cited to this effect speeches, pamphlets, magazine articles, and
finally their letters, in proof of our assertion. Altogether, the Marxists
cannot even think otherwise: protagonists of the State as they are, they
have have to damn any revolution of a truly popular sweep and character,
especially a peasant revolution, which is anarchistic by nature and which
marches straightforward toward the destruction of the State. And in this
hatred for the peasant rebellion, the Marxists join in touching unanimity
all the layers and parties of the bourgeois society of Germany.8
 205 Peasants* Day Is Y et to Come
Basic Solidarity o Peasants and Workers. One should not forget that
the peasants of France, certainly a vast majority of them, although owning
their lands, nevertheless live by their own labor. This is what separates
them essentially from the bourgeois class, the great majority o f which
lives by the profitable exploitation o f the work of the masses o f the people.
And this very circumstance unites the peasants with the city workers,
notwithstanding the difference o f their positionsa difference which is
much to the disadvantage o f the workersand the difference o f ideas, too
often resulting in misunderstandings in matters o f principles.
Proletarian Snobbishness Harmful to the Cause of Peasant-Worker
Unity. W hat above all alienates the peasants from the workers o f the
cities is a certain aristocracy o f intelligence, rather ill-founded on the part
of the workers, which they flaunt before the peasants. The workers are
no doubt the more literate, they are more developed so far as mind, knowl
edge, and ideas are concerned, and in the name o f this petty scientific
superiority, they sometimes treat the peasants condescendingly, openly
showing their contempt for them. The workers are quite wrong in that
respect, for by this very claim, and seemingly with much greater reason,
the bourgeois, who are much more learned and developed than the workers,
should have even a greater right to despise the latter. And as we know, the
bourgeois certainly do not miss any occasion to emphasize their superiority.
In the interests of the revolution, the workers should stop flaunting their
disdain for the peasants. In the face of the bourgeois exploiter the worker
should feel that he is the brother of the peasant.4
Revolutionary Unity of Workers and Peasants W ill Lead to Abolition
of Classes. The peasants in the greater part of Italy are miserably poor,
much poorer than the workers in the cities. T h ey are not proprietors like
the peasants of France, which fact is of course highly fortunate from the
point o f view o f the Revolution. And it is only in a few regions that the
peasants manage to make some sort of living as share-croppers. That is w hy
the masses of the Italian peasantry already constitute a vast and powerful
army of the Social Revolution. Directed by the proletariat of the city and
organized by the revolutionary Socialist youth, this army will be invincible.
Therefore, m y dear friends, simultaneously with the organizing of the
city workers, you should use all the means at your disposal to break the
ice separating the proletariat of the cities from the people of the villages,
and to unite and organize those tw o classes into one. And all the other
classes should disappear from the face of the earth, not as individuals but
as classes.8
 20 6 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

c h a p t e r 7 The State: General Outlook

Is the State the Embodiment of the General Interest? W hat is the

State? The metaphysicians and the learned jurists tel! us that the State is a
public affair: it represents the collective well-being and the rights of all
as opposed to the disintegrating action of the egoistic interests and passions
of the individual. It is the realization of justice, morality, and virtue upon
the earth. Consequently, there is no greater or more sublime duty on the
part of the individual than to dedicate, to sacrifice himself, and if necessary,
to die for the triumph and the power of the State.
Here we have in a few words the theology of the State. Let us see then
whether this political theology does not conceal beneath an attractive and
poetic appearance rather vulgar and sordid realities.
T h e Idea of the State Analyzed. Let us analyze first the idea of the
State as presented to us by its panegyrists. It is the sacrifice of natural lib
erty and the interests o f everyoneof individuals as well as of compara
tively small collective units, associations, communes, and provincesto the
interests and liberty of all, to the prosperity of the great whole.
But this totality, this great whole, what is it in reality? It is an agglom
eration of all the individuals and of all the more circumscribed human
collectives which comprise it. And if this whole, in order to constitute itself
as such, demands the sacrifice of individual and local interests, how then
can it in reality represent them in their totality?
An Exclusive But Not an Inclusive Universality. It is then not a living
whole, giving everyone the chance to breathe freely and becoming the
richer, freer, and more powerful, the more extensive the development of
liberty and prosperity for everyone becomes in its midst. It is not a natural
human society which supports and reinforces the life of everyone by the
life of allquite the contrary, it is the immolation of every individual as
well as of local associations, it is an abstraction which is destructive of a
living society, it is the limitation, or rather the complete negation, of the
life and of the rights of all the parts which go to make up the whole in
the purported interest o f everybody. It is the State, it is the altar of politi
cal religion upon which natural society is always immolated: a devouring
universality, subsisting upon human sacrifices, just as the Church does. The
State, I repeat again, is the youngest brother of the Church.1
T h e Premise of the Theory of the State Is the Negation of M ans
Liberty. But if the metaphysicians affirm that men, especially those who
believe in the immortality of the soul, stand outside of the society of free
beings, we inevitably arrive at the conclusion that men can unite in a
 207 T he State: General Outlook
society only at the cost of their own liberty, their natural independence,
and b y sacrificing first their personal and then their local interests, Such
self-renunciation and self-sacrifice are thus all the more imperative the
more numerous society is in point of membership and the greater the
complexity of its organization.
In this sense the State is the expression of all individual sacrifices. Given
this abstract and at the same time violent origin, the State must continue
restricting liberty to an even greater extent, doing it in the name of the
falsehood called the good of the people, which in reality represents
exclusively the interests of the dominant class. Thus the State appears as
an inevitable negation and annihilation of all liberty, and of all individual
and collective interests.2
T h e Abstraction of the State Hides the Concrete Factor of Class
Exploitation. It is evident that all the so-called general interests o f society
supposedly represented by the State, which in reality are only the general
and permanent negation of the positive interests of the regions, communes,
associations, and a vast number of individuals subordinated to the State,
constitute an abstraction, a fiction, a falsehood, and that the State is like
a vast slaughterhouse and an enormous cemetery, where under the shadow
and the pretext of this abstraction all the best aspirations, all the living
forces o f a country, are sanctimoniously immolated and interred. And since
abstractions do not exist in themselves nor for themselves, since they have
neither feet with which to walk, hands to create, nor stomachs to digest
this mass of victims turned over to them to be devoured, it is clear that
just as the religious or celestial abstraction G od represents in reality the
very positive and real interests of the clergy, so G od s earthly complement,
the political abstraction the State, represents no less positive and real
interests of the bourgeoisie, which is now the principal if not the exclusive
exploiting class. . . .8
T h e Church and the State. T o prove the identity of the State and
the Church, I shall ask the reader to take note of the fact that both are
essentially based upon the idea of sacrifice of life and natural rights, and
that both start equally from the same principle: the natural wickedness of
men, which, according to the Church, can be overcome only b y Divine
Grace, and b y the death of the natural man in God, and according to the
State, only through law and the immolation o f the individual on the altar
of the State. Both aim to transform man-one, into a saint, the other, into
a citizen. But the natural man has to die, for his condemnation is unani
mously decreed b y the religion of the Church and that o f the State.
Such, in its ideal purity, is the identical theory of the Church and the
State. It is a pure abstraction; but every historic abstraction presupposes
historic facts. And these facts are of an altogether real and brutal character:
they are violence, spoliation, conquest, enslavement. Man is so constituted
that he is not content merely to commit certain acts; he also feels the need
of justifying and legitimating those acts before the eyes o f the whole world.
 208 TH E PO L IT IC A L P H ILO SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

Thus religion came in the nick of time to bestow its blessing upon accom
plished facts, and owing to this benediction, the iniquitous and brutal facts
became transformed into rights.
Abstraction of the State in Real Life. Let us see now what role this
abstraction of the State, paralleling the historic abstraction called the
Church, has played and continues to play in real life, in human society. The
State, as I have said before, is in effect a vast cemetery wherein all the mani
festations of individual and local life are sacrificed, where the interests
of the parts constituting the whole die and are buried. It is the altar on
which the real liberty and the well-being of peoples are immolated to
political grandeur; and the more complete this immolation is, the more
perfect is the State. Hence I conclude that the Russian Empire is a State
par excellencey a State without rhetoric or phrase-mongering, the most per
fect in Europe. On the contrary, all States in which the people are allowed
to breathe somewhat are, from the ideal point of view, incomplete States,
just as other churches, compared to the Roman Catholic, are deficient.
T h e Sacerdotal Body of the State. The State is an abstraction devour
ing the life of the people. But in order that an abstraction may be bom,
that it may develop and continue to exist in real life, it is necessary that
there be a real collective body interested in maintaining its existence. This
function cannot be fulfilled b y the masses of the people, since it is they
who are precisely the victims of the State. It has to be done by a privileged
body, the sacerdotal body of the State, the governing and possessing class
which holds the same place in the State that the sacerdotal class in religion
the priestshold in the Church.
T h e State Could Not Exist W ithout a Privileged Body. And, indeed,
what do we see throughout history? The State has always been the patri
mony of some privileged class: the sacerdotal class, the nobility, the bour
geoisieand finally, when all the other classes have exhausted themselves,
the class of bureaucracy enters upon the stage and then the State falls, or
rises, if you please, to the position of a machine. But for the salvation of
the State it is absolutely necessary that there be some privileged class
interested in maintaining its existence.4
T h e Liberal and Absolutist Theories of the State. The State is not
a direct product of Nature; it does not precede, as society does, the awaken
ing of thought in man. According to liberal political writers, the first
State was created by mans free and conscious will; according to the abso
lutists, the State is a divine creation. In both cases it dominates society and
tends altogether to absorb it.
In the second case [that of the absolutist theory] this absorption is self-
evident: a divine institution must necessarily devour all natural organiza
tions. W hat is more curious in this case is that the individualistic school,
with its free-contract theory, leads to the same result. And, indeed, this
school begins by denying the very existence o f a natural society ante-
 209 State: General Outlook
dating the contractinasmuch as such a society would presuppose the
existence of natural relations among individuals, and consequently a recipe
rocal limitation of their liberties, which is contrary to the absolute liberty
enjoyed, according to this theory, prior to the conclusion of the contract,
and which would be neither less nor more than this contract itself, existing
as a natural fact and preceding the free contract. According to this theory,
human society began only with the conclusion of the contract. But what
then is this society? It is the pure and logical realization o f the contract,
with all of its Implied tendencies and legislative and practical consequences
it is the State.
T h e State Is the Sum of Negations of Individual Liberty. Let us
examine it more closely. W hat does the State represent? The sum of nega
tions of the individual liberties of all of its members; or the sum o f sacri
fices which all o f its members make in renouncing a part of their liberty
for the common good. W e have seen that, according to the individualist
theory, the freedom of everyone is the limit, or rather the natural negation
of the freedom of all the others. And so it is this absolute limitation, this
negation of the liberty of everyone in the name of liberty of all or of the
common right, that constitutes the State. Thus where the State begins,
individual liberty ceases, and vice versa.
Liberty Is Indivisible. It will be argued that the State, the representa
tive of the public weal or of the interest common to all, curtails a part^of
everyones liberty in order to assure the remainder of this liberty. But this
remainder is security, if you please, yet it is b y no means liberty. For
liberty is indivisible: a part o f it cannot be curtailed without destroying it
as a whole. This small part o f liberty which is being curtailed is the very
essence o f my liberty, it is everything. B y a natural, necessary, and irre
sistible movement all my liberty is concentrated precisely in that part,
small though it may be, which is being curtailed.
Universal Suffrage Is No Guarantee of Freedom. But, we are told,
the democratic State, based upon free universal suffrage for all its citizens,
surely cannot be the negation o f their liberty. And w hy not? This depends
absolutely upon the mission and the power which the citizens delegate to
the State. And a republican State, based upon universal suffrage, could be
exceedingly despotic, even more despotic than a monarchic State, when,
under the pretext o f representing the will of everyone, it bears down upon
the will and the free movement o f every one o f its members with the whole
weight of its collective power.
W ho Is the Supreme Arbiter of Good and Evil? But the State, it will
be argued again, restricts the liberty of its members only in so far as this
liberty is bent upon injustice, upon evil-doing. The State prevents them
from killing, robbing, and offending one another, and in general from doing
evil, leaving them on the contrary full and complete liberty to do good.
But what is good and what is evil?5
 210 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N I N

c h a p t e r 8 The Modem State Surveyed

Capitalism and Representative Democracy. Modern capitalist produc

tion and banking speculations demand for their full development a vast
centralized State apparatus which alone is capable of subjecting the mil
lions of toilers to their exploitation.
A federal organization, from the bottom upward, of workers associa
tions, groups, city and village communes, and finally o f regions and peoples,
the sole condition of a real and not fictitious liberty, is just as contrary to
capitalist production as any sort of economic autonomy. But capitalist pro
duction and banking speculation get along very well with the so-called
representative democracy; for this most modern State form, based upon
the pretended rule by the peoples will, allegedly expressed b y the would-be
representatives of the people at the supposedly popular assemblies, unites
in itself the two conditions necessary for the prosperity of the capitalistic
economy: State centralization and the actual subjection o f the Sovereign
The Peopleto the minority allegedly representing it but actually gov
erning it intellectually and invariably exploiting it.
Modem State Must Have Centralized, M ilitary Apparatus. The mod
em State, in its essence and aims, is necessarily a military State, and a mili
tary State is driven on b y the very same logic to become a conquering
State. If it does not conquer, it will be conquered b y others, and that is
true for the simple reason that where there is force, it must manifest itself
in some form. Hence it follows that the modem State invariably must be
a vast and powerful State: only under this indispensable condition can
it preserve itself.
Dynamics of State and Capitalism Are Identical. And just as capital
ist production and banking speculation, which in the long run swallows up
that production, must, under the threat of bankruptcy, ceaselessly expand
at the expense of the small financial and productive enterprises which they
absorb, must become universal, monopolistic enterprises extending all over
the w orld-so this modern and necessarily military State is driven on by
an irrepressible urge to become a universal State. But a universal State,
which of course never can be realized, can exist only in a singular number,
the co-existence of two such States alongside of each other being utterly
impossible.
Monarchy and Republic. Hegemony is only a modest manifestation,
possible under the circumstances, of this unrealizable urge inherent in every
State. And the first condition of this hegemony is the relative impotence
and subjection of all the neighboring States.1 A t the present time, most
211 T he Modern State Surveyed
serious in its implications, a strong State can have only one foundation;
military and bureaucratic centralization. In this respect the essential dif
ference between a monarchy and a democratic republic is reduced to the
following: in a monarchy the bureaucratic world oppresses and plunders
the people for the greater benefit of the privileged propertied classes as
well as for its own benefit, and all that is done in the name of the monarch;
in a republic the same bureaucracy will do exactly the same, butin the
name of the will of the people. In a republic the so-called people, the
legal people, allegedly represented by the State, stifle and will keep on
stifling the actual and living people. But the people will scarcely feel any
better if the stick with which they are being belabored is called The
Peoples Stick.
N o State Can Satisfy the Aspirations of the People. N o State, demo
cratic though it may be in formand not even the reddest political repub
lic, which is a peoples republic in the same sense in which this falsehood
is known by the name of popular representationcan give the people what
they need, that is, the free organization of their own interests, from the
bottom upward, with no interference, tutelage, or violence from above,
because every State, even the most Republican and the most democratic
Stateeven the would-be popular State conceived by M. Marxare in
their essence only machines governing the masses from above, through an
intelligent and therefore a privileged minority, allegedly knowing ffie gen
uine interests of the people better than the people themselves.
Inherent Antagonism Toward People le a d s to Violence. Thus, not
being able to satisfy the demands of the people or to allay popular passion,
the propertied and ruling classes have only one means at their disposal:
State violence, in a word, the State, because the State denotes violence,
rule b y disguised, or if necessary open and unceremonious, violence.2
The State, any Stateeven when it is dressed up in the most liberal and
democratic formis necessarily based upon domination, and upon violence,
that is, upon despotisma concealed but no less dangerous despotism.8
Militarism and Freedom. W e have already said that society cannot
remain a State without taking on the character of a conquering State. The
same competition, which in the economic field annihilates and swallows
up small and even medium-sized capital, industrial enterprises, and landed
estates in favor of vast capital, factories, and commercial housesis also
operative in the lives of the States, leading to the destruction and absorp
tion o f small and medium-sized States for the benefit of empires. Hence
forth every State, in so far as it wants to live not only on paper and not
merely b y sufferance o f its neighbors, but to enjoy real independence
inevitably must become a conquering State.
But to be a conquering State means to be forced to hold in subjection
many millions of alien people. And this requires the development of a
huge military force. And where military force prevails, there freedom has
212 TH E PO L IT IC A L PH ILO SO PH Y OF B A K U N IN
to take its leaveespecially the freedom and well-being o f the working
people.4
Expansion of State Leads to Growth of Abuse. Some believe that
when the State has expanded and its population has doubled, trebled, or
increased tenfold, it will become more liberal, and that its institutions, all
the conditions of its existence, and its governmental action will become
more popular in character and more in harmony with the instincts of the
people. But upon what is this hope and this supposition based? Upon
theory? Y et theoretically it is quite evident that the larger the State, the
more complex its organism, and the more alien it becomes to the people
and because of that, the more do its interests militate against the interests
of the masses of the people, the heavier the oppression of the people, and
the farther apart the State government finds itself from genuine popular
self-rule.
O r are their expectations based upon the practical experience o f other
countries? B y way of answering this question, it is enough to point to the
example of Russia, Austria, expanded Prussia, France, England, Italy, and
even the United States of America, where everything is under the admin
istrative control of a special, altogether bourgeois class, under the control
of so-called politicians or business people in politics, whereas the great
mass of toilers live under conditions which are just as wretched and fright
ful as those which prevail in the monarchic States.
Social Control of State Power as a Necessary Safeguard for Liberty.
Modem society is so convinced of this truththat all political power, what
ever its origin and form may be, necessarily tends toward despotismthat
in any country where society succeeds in emancipating itself to some
extent from the State, it hastens to subject the government, even when
the latter has sprung from a revolution and from popular elections, to as
severe a control as possible. It places the salvation of liberty in a real and
serious organization of control to be exercised b y the popular will and
opinion upon men invested with public authority. In all the countries
enjoying representative government, liberty can be valid only when this
control is valid. On the contrary, where such control is fictitious, the
freedom of the people likewise becomes a mere fiction.6
The best men easily become corrupted, especially when the environ
ment itself promotes corruption on the part of individuals through lack
of serious control and permanent opposition.7
Lack of permanent opposition and continuous control inevitably be
come a source of moral depravity for all the individuals who find them
selves invested with some social power.8
Participation in Government as a Source of Corruption, Many times
it has been established as a general truth that it suffices for anyone, even
the most liberal and popular man, to become a part of a governmental
machine in order to undergo a complete change in outlook and attitude.
21 3 TAe Modern State Surveyed
Unless that person is frequently reinvigorated by contacts with the life o f
the people; unless he is compelled to act openly under conditions o f full
publicity; unless he is subjected to a salutary and uninterrupted regime
of popular control and criticism, which is to remind him constantly that
he is not the master nor even the guardian of the masses but only their
proxy or their elected functionary who is always subject to recallunless
he is placed under those conditions, he runs the risk of becoming utterly
spoiled by dealing only with aristocrats like himself, and he also runs the
risk of becoming a pretentious and vain fool, all puffed up with the feel
ing of his ridiculous importance.9
Universal Suffrage as an Attempted Form of Popular Control; the
Swiss Example. It would be easy to prove that in no part of Europe is
there genuine control b y the people. But we shall confine ourselves to
Switzerland and see how this control is being applied. . . .
. . . Toward the period o f 1830 the most advanced cantons in Switzer
land sought to guarantee liberty b y introducing universal suffrage. . . .
Once this universal suffrage had been established, the belief became general
that from then on liberty for the population would be firmly assured.
This, however, turned out to be a great illusion, and one may say that the
realization of this illusion led in some cantons to the downfall and every
where to the demoralization, which today has become some flagrant, of-
the Radical Party. . . . [It] really acted on the strength of its convictions
when it promised liberty to the people through universal suffrage. . . .
And, indeed, the whole thing seemed so natural and simple: Once the
legislative and executive power emanate directly from popular elections,
shall they not become the pure expression of the will o f the people, and
that will, can it produce anything else but freedom and prosperity of
the people?10
Universal Suffrage Under Capitalism. I frankly confess, my dear
friend, that I do not share the superstitious devotion of your bourgeois
radicals or your republican bourgeois to universal suffrage. . . . So long
as universal suffrage is exercised in a society where the people, the mass
of workers, are E C O N O M IC A L L Y dominated by a minority holding in
exclusive possession the property and capital of the country, free or inde
pendent though the people may be otherwise, or as they may appear to
be from a political aspect, these elections held under conditions of uni
versal suffrage can only be illusory, anti-democratic in their results, which
invariably will prove to be absolutely opposed to the needs, instincts, and
real will of the population.
Universal Suffrage in Past History. And all the elections held after
the coup detat of December,* with the people of France directly partici-

The coup d'etat effected by Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III) on December 2, j 8j i ,

which made him practically dictator of France.
 2 14 T H E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
paring in such elections, were they not in their results quite contrary to the
interests of the people? A nd did not the last imperial plebiscite yield
seven millions of Yes votes to the Emperor? N o doubt it will be argued
that universal suffrage was never freely exercised under the Empire, inas
much as freedom of the press and freedom o f associationthe essential
conditions of political libertyhad been proscribed and the defenseless
people left to be corrupted b y a subsidized press and an infamous admin
istration. Be it so, but the elections of 1848 for the Constituent Assembly
and the office of President, and also those held in May, 1849, for the
Legislative Assembly, were, I believe, absolutely free. T h ey took place
with no undue pressure or intervention by the government, under condi
tions of the greatest freedom. And, still, what did they produce? Nothing
but reaction.11
W hy Workers Cannot Make Use of Political Democracy. One has to
be greatly enamored of illusions to imagine that workers, under the eco
nomic and social conditions in which they now find themselves, can fully
profit, or can make serious and real use of their political freedom. For this
they lack two small things: leisure and material means. . . .
Certainly the French workers were neither indifferent nor unintel
ligent, and yet, notwithstanding the most extensive universal suffrage, they
had to clear the stage of action for the bourgeoisie. W hy? Because they
lacked the material means which are necessary to make political liberty a
reality, because they remained slaves forced to work by hunger while the
radical, liberal, and even conservative bourgeoissome Republicans of quite
recent date and others converted on the morrow of the Revolutionkept
coming and going, agitated, harangued, and freely conspired. Some could
do it because of their incomes from rent or from some other lucrative
variety of bourgeois income, and others owed it to the State budget,
which they naturally preserved and even increased to an unheard of
extent.
The results are well known: first, the June days, and later, as a neces
sary sequel, the days of December.12
Proudhon on Universal Suffrage. One of the first acts of the Pro
visional Government (of 1848), says Proudhon,* an act eliciting the
greatest applause, was the application of universal suffrage. On the very
day that the decree was promulgated, we wrote precisely these words,
which at that time could have passed as a paradox: Universal suffrage is
counter-revolution. One can judge b y the events which followed whether
we were right in this matter. The elections of 1848, in their great majority,
were carried by priests, legitimists, partisans of monarchy, by the most
reactionary and retrograde elements of France. And it could not be
otherwise.
* The General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century. Bakunin does not
give the page number.
215 T h e Modern State Surveyed
No, it could not be otherwise, and this will hold true to an even
greater measure so long as inequality of economic and social conditions
prevails in the organization of society, and so long as society continues to
be divided into two classes, one of which exploiting and privileged
classenjoys all the advantages o f fortune, education, and leisure, while
the other classcomprising the whole mass of the proletariatgets for its
share only forced and wearisome labor, ignorance, and poverty, with
their necessary accompaniment: slavery, not by right but in fact.
T h e Great Odds Which the Proletariat Must Face in Political Democ
racy. Yes, slavery indeed; for wide as may be in scope the political rights
accorded to these millions of wage-receiving proletariansthe true galley-
slaves of hungeryou will never succeed in drawing them away from the
pernicious influence, from the natural domination of diverse representa
tives of the privileged classesbeginning with the preacher and ending
with the bourgeois Republican of the reddest, Jacobin varietyrepresent
atives who, divided though they may appear, or as they may actually be,
on political questions, are nevertheless united b y one common and
supreme interest: the exploitation of the misery, ignorance, political inex
perience, and good faith of the proletariat, for the benefit of the economic
domination of the possessing class.
H ow could the city and rural proletariat resist the political intrigues
of the clericals, the nobility, and the bourgeoisie? For self-defense it has
only one weaponits instinct, which tends almost always to be true and
just because it is itself the principal, if not the sole victim of the iniquity
and all the falsehoods which reign supreme in existing society. And because
it is oppressed by privilege it naturally demands equality for all.
Workers Lack Education, Leisure, and Knowledge of Affairs. But
instinct as a weapon is not sufficient to safeguard the proletariat against
the reactionary machinations of the privileged classes. Instinct left to
itself, and inasmuch as it has not been transformed into consciously
reflected, clearly determined thought, lends itself easily to falsification,
distortion, and deceit. Yet it is impossible for it to rise to this state of self-
awareness without the aid of education, of science; and science, knowledge
of affairs and o f people, and political experiencethose are things which
the proletariat completely lacks. The consequence can be easily foreseen:
the proletariat wants one thing, but clever people, profiting by its igno
rance, make it do quite another thing, without it even suspecting that it is
doing the contrary of what it wants to do. And when it finally does take
note of this, it is generally too late to repair the wrong o f which it
naturally, necessarily, and invariably becomes the first and principal
victim.13
Workers Deputies Lose T heir Proletarian Outlook. But, we are told,
the workers, taught b y the experience which they have gone through,
will not send the bourgeoisie any more as their representatives to the
 ll6 TH E PO L IT IC A L PH ILO SO PH Y OF B A K U N IN

Constituent or Legislative Assemblies; instead they will send simple

workers. Poor as they are, the workers can manage somehow to scrape
up enough for the upkeep of their parliamentary deputies. And do you
know what will be the result? The inevitable result will be that workers'
deputies, transferred to a purely bourgeois environment and into an
atmosphere of purely bourgeois political ideas, ceasing in fact to be
workers and becoming statesmen instead, will become middle class in
their outlook, perhaps even more so than the bourgeois themselves.
For men do not create situations; it is situations that create men. And
we know from experience that bourgeois workers are frequently neither
less egoistical than bourgeois exploiters, nor less baneful for the Inter
national than bourgeois Socialists; nor are they less ridiculous in their
vanity than bourgeois commoners raised into nobility.
Political Liberty W ithout Socialism Is a Fraud. Whatever may be
said and done, one thing is clear: so long as the workers remain in their
present state, no liberty will be possible for them, and those who call
upon them to win political liberties without touching upon the burning
question of Socialism, without even uttering the phrase social liquidation
which sets the bourgeois trembling, tell them in effect the following:
W in first this freedom for us in order that we may use it against you
later. 14
Under Capitalism the Bourgeoisie Is Better Equipped T h an the
Workers to Make Use of Parliamentarian Democracy. It is certain that
the bourgeoisie knows better than the proletariat what it wants and what
it should want. This is true for two reasons: first, because it is more
learned than the latter, and because it has more leisure and many more
means o f all sorts to know the persons whom it elected; and secondand
this is the principal reasonbecause the purpose which it is pursuing is,
unlike that of the proletariat, neither new nor is it immensely large in scope.
On the contrary, it is known and is completely determined b y history as
well as b y all the conditions of the present situation of the bourgeoisie,
this purpose being nothing else but the preservation of political and eco
nomic domination b y the bourgeoisie. This is so clearly posed that it is
quite easy to guess and to know which of the candidates who solicit the
electoral votes of the bourgeoisie are capable o f serving well its interests.
Therefore it is certain, or nearly certain, that the bourgeoisie will always
be represented in accordance with its most intimate desires.
Classes Do Not Abdicate Their Privileges. But it is no less certain
that this representation, excellent from the point of view of the bour
geoisie, will prove to be detestable from the point of view o f popular
interests. The interests o f the bourgeoisie being absolutely opposed to those
of the working masses, it is certain that a bourgeois Parliament could
never do anything else but legislate the slavery o f the people, and vote
all those measures which have for their aim the perpetuation of their
 217 T he Modern State Surveyed
poverty and ignorance. Indeed, one must be extremely naive to believe
that a bourgeois Parliament could freely vote to bring about the intellec
tual, material, and political emancipation of the people. Has it ever been
witnessed in history that a political body, a privileged class, committed
suicide, or sacrificed the least o f its interests and so-called rights for the
love of justice and liberty?
I believe I have already pointed out that even the famous night o f
August 4, when the nobility of France generously sacrificed their interests
upon the altar of the fatherland, was nothing but a forced and belated
consequence of a formidable uprising of peasants who set fire to the
title deeds and the castles of their lords and masters. N o, classes never
sacrifice themselves and will never do itbecause it is contrary to their
nature, to the reason for their existence, and nothing is ever done or ever
can be done by them against Nature or against reason. Therefore one
would have to be mad, indeed, to expect from a privileged Assembly
measures and laws for the benefit of the people.16
It is clear to me that universal suffrage is the most extensive and at the
same time the most refined manifestation of the political charlatanism of
the State; a dangerous instrument without doubt, and demanding a .great
deal of skill and competence by those who make use of it, but becoming
at the same timethat is, if those people learn to make use of itthe surest
means of making the masses co-operate in the building of their own
prison. Napoleon III built his power completely upon universal suffrage
and it never betrayed his trust. And Bismarck made it the basis of his
Knouto-Germanic Empire.16

Based on Fiction

Th e Basic Discrepancy. The falsehood of the representative system

rests upon the fiction that the executive power and the legislative chamber
issuing from popular elections must, or even can for that matter, represent
the will of the people. The people want instinctively, want necessarily,
two things: the greatest material prosperity possible under the circum
stances and the greatest liberty in their lives, liberty of movement and
liberty of action. That is, they want better organization of their economic
interests and complete absence of all power, of all political organization
 2l8 T H E P O L I T I C A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF BAKXJNIN

since every political organization inevitably ends in negation o f the

liberty o f the people. Such is the essence of all popular instincts.
G ulf Between Those Who Govern and Those T hat Are Governed.
But the instinctive aims of those who governof those who frame the
laws of the country as well as of those who exercise the executive power,
are, because of their exceptional position diametrically opposed to the
instinctive popular aspirations. Whatever their democratic sentiments and
intentions may be, viewing society from the high position in which they
find themselves, they cannot consider this society in any other way but
that in which a schoolmaster views his pupils. And there can be no
equality between the schoolmaster and the pupils. On one side there is
the feeling of superiority necessarily inspired by a superior position; on
the other side there is the feeling of inferiority induced b y the attitude
o f superiority on the part of the teacher exercising executive or legislative
power. Whoever says political power says domination. And where
domination exists, a more or less considerable section of the population is
bound to be dominated b y others. So it is quite natural that those who are
dominated detest those who dominate them, while those who do the
dominating necessarily must repress and consequently oppress those who
are subject to their domination.
Change of Perspective Induced By Possession of Power. Such has
been the eternal history of political power ever since that power was
established in this world. It is that also which explains w h y and how
men who were democrats and rebels of the reddest variety when they
were a part of the mass of governed people, became exceedingly moderate
when they rose to power. Usually these backslidings are attributed to
treason. That, however, is an erroneous idea; they have for their main
cause the change of position and perspective.
Labor Government Subject to the Same Change. Permeated with
this truth, I can express without fear of being contradicted the conviction
that if there should be established tomorrow a government or a legislative
council, a Parliament made up exclusively of workers, those very workers
who are now staunch democrats and Socialists, will become determined
aristocrats, bold or timid worshipers of the principle of authority, and will
also become oppressors and exploiters.
The Example of the Most Radical Political Democracy. In Switzer
land, as in all other countries, much as the equalitarian principles have been
embodied in its political constitutions, it is the bourgeoisie that governs,
and it is the people, the workers, peasants included, who obey the laws
made b y the bourgeoisie. The people have neither the leisure nor the
necessary education to occupy themselves with the matters of govern
ment. The bourgeoisie, possessing both, has in fact if not b y right the
exclusive privilege of governing. Therefore political equality in Switzer
land, as in all other countries, is only a puerile fiction, an utter lie.
219 Representative System Based on Fiction
The Popular W ill as Refracted Through the Bourgeois Prism. But
being so far removed from the people by the conditions of its economic
and social existence, how can the bourgeoisie give expression in the gov
ernment and in the laws, to the feelings, the ideas, and the will of the
people? This is an impossibility, and daily experience proves to us in effect
that in legislation as well as in carrying on the government, the bour
geoisie is guided by its own interests and its own instincts without con
cerning itself much with the interests of the people.
True, all the Swiss legislators, as well as the members o f the govern
ments of the various Swiss cantons, are elected, directly or indirectly, b y
the people. True, on election days even the proudest bourgeois who have
any political ambitions are forced to court His MajestyThe Sovereign
People. T hey come to Him with their hats off and seemingly have no
other will but that of the people. This, however, is for them only a brief
interlude of unpleasantness. On the day after the elections every one goes
back to his daily business: the people to their work, and the bourgeoisie
to their lucrative affairs and political intrigues. T h ey do not meet and
they do not know each other any more.
H ow can the peoplewho are crushed by their toil and ignorant ^oF
most of the questions at issuecontrol the political acts o f their elected
representatives? And is it not evident that the control supposedly exercised
by the electors over their representatives is in reality nothing but sheer
fiction? Since popular control in the representative system is the sole
guarantee of popular liberty, it is clear that this liberty itself is nothing
but pure fiction.
T h e Referendum Comes Into Being. In order to obviate this incon
venience, the Radical-Democrats o f the Zurich canton devised and put
into practice a new political systemthe referendum, or direct legislation
by the people. But the referendum itself is only a palliative, a new illusion,
a falsehood. In order to vote, with full knowledge of the issue in question
and with the full freedom required for it, upon laws proposed to the
people or which the people themselves are induced to propose, it is
necessary that the people have the time and the education needed to study
those proposals, to reflect upon them, to discuss them. The people must
become a vast Parliament holding its sessions in the open fields.
But this is rarely possible, and only upon grand occasions when the
proposed laws arouse the attention and affect the interests of everyone.
Most of the time the proposed laws are of such a specialized nature that
one has to accustom oneself to political and juridical abstractions to grasp
rheir real implications. Naturally they escape the attention and compre
hension of the people, who vote for them blindly, believing implicitly
their favorite orators. Taken separately, every one of those laws appears
too insignificant to be of much interest to the masses, but in their totality
they form a net which enmeshes them. Thus, in spite of the referendum,
 220 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N I N
the so-called sovereign people remain the instrument and the very humble
servant of the bourgeoisie.
W e can well see then that in the representative system, even when
improved upon with the aid of the referendum, popular control does not
exist, and since no serious liberty is possible for the people without this
control, we are driven to the conclusion that popular liberty and self-
government are falsehoods.1
M unicipal Elections Are Nearer to the People. The people, owing
to the economic situation in which they still find themselves, are inevitably
ignorant and indifferent, and know only those things which closely
affect them. They well understand their daily interests, the affairs of
daily life. But over and above these there begins for them the unknown,
the uncertain, and the danger of political mystification. Since the people
possess a good deal of practical instinct, they rarely let themselves be
deceived in municipal elections. T h ey know more or less the affairs of
their municipality, they take a great deal of interest in those matters,
and they know how to choose from their midst men who are the most
capable o f conducting those affairs. In these matters control b y the people
is quite possible, for they take place under the very eyes of the electors
and touch upon the most intimate interests of their daily existence. That
is w h y municipal elections are always and everywhere the best, conform
ing in a more real manner to the feelings, interests, and will of the people.2
But Even in Municipalities the Peoples W ill Is Thwarted. The
greater part of the affairs and laws which have a direct bearing upon the
well-being and the material interests of the communes, are consummated
above the heads of the people, without their noticing it, caring about it,
or intervening in it. The people are compromised, committed to certain
courses o f action, and sometimes ruined without even being aware of it.
T h ey have neither the experience nor the necessary time to study all that,
and they leave it all to their elected representatives, who naturally serve
the interests of their own class, their own world, and not the world of
the people, and whose greatest art consists in presenting their measures
and laws in the most soothing and popular character. The system of
democratic representation is a system of hypocrisy and perpetual lies. It
needs the stupidity of the people as a necessary condition for its existence,
and it bases its triumphs upon this state of the peoples minds.3
Bourgeois Republic Cannot Be Identified W ith Liberty. The bour
geois republicans are quite wrong in identifying their republic with
liberty. Therein lies the great source of all their illusions when they find
themselves in opposition,and likewise the source of their deceptions and
inconsistencies when they have the power in their hands. Their republic
is based entirely upon this idea of power and a strong government, of a
government which has to show itself the more energetic and powerful
because it sprang from a popular election. And they do not want to
 221 Representative System Based on Fiction
understand this simple truth one that is confirmed by the experience of
all times and all peoples, that every organized, established power neces
sarily excludes the liberty o f the people.
Since the political State has no other mission but to protect the
exploitation of the labor of the people b y the economically privileged
classes, the power of that State can be compatible only with the exclusive
liberty of those classes whom it represents, and for this very reason it is
hound to run contrary to the liberty of the people. W ho says the State
says domination, and every domination presumes the existence o f masses
who are dominated. Consequently the State can have no confidence in
the spontaneous action and free movement of the masses, whose most
cherished interests militate against its existence. It is their natural enemy,
their invariable oppressor, and although it takes good care not to avow
it openly, it is bound to act always In this capacity.
It is this that most o f the young partisans of the authoritarian or bour
geois republic do not understand so long as they remain in the opposition,
inasmuch as they themselves have not yet had a taste o f this power.
Because they detest the monarchic despotism from the depth of their
hearts, with all the passion of which their paltry, enervated, and degener
ate natures are capable, they imagine that they detest despotism in general
Because they would like to have the power and the courage to subvert
the throne, they believe themselves to be revolutionaries. And they do not
even suspect that it is not despotism that they hate but only its monarchic
form, and that this very despotism, when it takes on the guise of a
republican form, will have found in them the most zealous adherents.
Radically There Is Little Difference Between Monarchy and Democ
racy. T h ey do not know that despotism resides not so much in the form
of the State or o f power as in the very principle of the State and political
power, and that consequently the republican State is bound b y its very
essence to be as despotic as a State governed b y an Emperor or a King.
There is only one real difference between the two States. Both have for
their essential basis and aim the economic enslavement o f the masses for
the benefit of the possessing classes. W hat they do differ in is that in order
to attain this aim the monarchic power, which in our days inevitably
tends to be transformed into a military dictatorship, deprives every class
of liberty, even the class which it protects to the detriment of the people.
. . . It is compelled to serve the interests of the bourgeoisie, but it does so
without permitting that class to interfere in any serious manner in the
government o f the affairs of the country. . . .
From Revolution to Counter-Revolution. Bourgeois republicans are
the most rabid and passionate enemies o f the Social Revolution. In
moments o f political crisis, when they need the powerful hand of the
people to subvert the throne, they stoop to promise material improve
ments to this so very interesting class o f workers; but since they are at
 222 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
the same time animated with the most firm resolve to preserve and
maintain all the principles, all the sacred foundations, o f existing society,
and to preserve all those economic and juridical institutions which have
for their necessary consequence actual slavery of the peopleit stands to
reason that their promises dissolve like smoke into thin air. Disillusioned,
the people murmur, threaten, revolt, and then, in order to hold back the
explosion o f the peoples discontent, theythe bourgeois revolutionists
see themselves forced to resort to all-powerful repression b y the State.
Hence it follows that the republican State is altogether just as oppressive
as the monarchic State; only its oppression is directed not against the
possessing classes but exclusively against the people.
Republic the Favorite Form of Bourgeois Rule. Accordingly no
form o f government was ever so favorable to the interests of the bour
geoisie nor was it ever so beloved by the bourgeoisie as the republic; and
it would always remain so if only, in the present economic situation of
Europe, the republic had the power to maintain itself against the ever
more threatening Socialist aspirations of the masses o f workers.4
The Moderate and Radical Wings of the Bourgeoisie. There is no
substantial difference between the Radical Party of republicans and the
moderate doctrinaire party o f constitutional liberals. Both spring from
the same source, differing only in temperament. Both put as the basis o f
the social organization: the State, and family law, with the resulting
inheritance law and personal property, that is, the right of the propertied
minority to exploit the labor of the propertyless majority. The difference
between the two parties consists in that the doctrinaire liberals want to
concentrate all the political rights exclusively in the hands of the exploit
ing minority, whereas radical liberals want to extend those rights to the
exploited masses of the people. The doctrinaire liberals view the State as
a fortress chiefly created for the purpose of securing to the privileged
minority the exclusive possession of political and economic rights, while
the radicals, on the contrary, uphold the States before the people as a
defender against the despotism of the very same minority.
Democratic State a Contradiction in Terms. One must admit that
logic and all historical experience are on the side of the doctrinaire liberals.
So long as the people, b y their toil, feed, maintain, and enrich the privi
leged groups of the populationuntil that time the people, incapable of
self-government because of being compelled to work not for themselves
but for others, invariably will be ruled and dominated b y the exploiting
classes. This cannot be remedied even by the broadest democratic consti
tution, because the economic fact is stronger than political rights, which
can have meaning and actuality only inasmuch as they rest upon this
economic fact.
And, finally, equality o f political rights, or a democratic State, con
stitute in themselves the most glaring contradiction in terms. The State,
> 223 Representative System Based on Fiction
or political right, denotes force, authority, predominance; it presupposes
inequality in fact. Where all rule, there are no more ruled, and there is no
Sate. Where all equally enjoy the same human rights, there all political
right loses its reason for being. Political right connotes privilege, and
where all are equally privileged, there privilege vanishes, and along with
it goes political right. Therefore the terms democratic State and
*'equality of political rights*'1 denote no less than the destruction o f the
State and abolition of all political right.5
The term democracy denotes government of the people, by the
copie, and for the people, with the latter denoting the whole mass of
citizensand nowadays one must add: citizenesseswho form a nation.
In this sense we certainly are all democrats.
Democracy As Rule of People an Equivocal Concept. But at the
same time we have to recognize that this termdemocracyh not sufficient
for an exact definition, and that, viewed in isolation, like the term libertyM
it can lend itself only to equivocal interpretations. Have we not seen the
planters, the slave owners of the South and all their partisans in the North
of the United States, calling themselves democrats? And modem Caesar-
ism, hanging like a terrible threat over all humanity in Europe, does it not
likewise name itself as democratic? And even the Muscovite and Saint
Petersburg imperialism, this State pure and simple, this ideal of all the
centralized, military, and bureaucratic powers, was it not in the name o f
democracy that it recently crushed Poland?
Republic in Itself Holds No Solution For Social Problems. It is
evident that democracy without liberty cannot serve as our banner. But
what is this democracy based upon liberty if not a republic? The union
of freedom with privilege creates a regime of constitutional monarchy,
hut its union with democracy can be realized only in a republic. . . . W e
nre all republicans in the sense that, driven by the consequences of an
inexorable logic, forewarned by the harsh but at the same time salutary
lessons of history, by all the experiences of the past, and above all by the
events that have cast their gloom over Europe since 1848, as well as b y
t lie dangers threatening us today, we have all equally arrived at this con
victionthat monarchic institutions are incompatible 'with the reign of
peacet justice, and liberty.
As for us, gentlemen, as Russian Socialists and as Slavs, we hold it our
duty to declare openly that the word republic has only an altogether
negative value, that o f subverting and eliminating the monarchy, and that
not only does the republic fail to elate us but, on the contrary, every time
that it is represented to us as a positive and serious solution of all the
questions of the day, and as the supreme end toward which all our efforts
should tendwe feel that we have to protest.
W e detest monarchy with all our hearts; we do not ask anything
lictter than to see it overthrown all over Europe and the world, and like
 224 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

you w e are convinced that its abolition is the indispensable condition of

the emancipation of humanity. From this point of view we are frankly
republicans. But we do not believe that it is sufficient to overthrow the
monarchy in order to emancipate the people and give them justice and
peace. W e are firmly convinced of the contrary, namely: that a great,
military, bureaucratic, and politically centralized republic can become
and necessarily will become a conquering power in its relation to other
powers and oppressive in regard to its own population, and that it will
prove incapable of assuring to its subjectseven when they are called
citizenswell-being and liberty. Have we not seen the great French
nation twice constitute itself as a democratic republic, and twice lose its
liberty and let itself be drawn into wars of conquest?6
Social Justice Incompatible W ith Existence of the State. The State
denotes violence, oppression, exploitation, and injustice raised into a
system and made into the cornerstone of the existence of any society. The
State never had and never will have any morality. Its morality and only
justice is the supreme interest o f self-preservation and almighty power
an interest before which all humanity has to kneel in worship. The State
is the complete negation of humanity, a double negation: the opposite of
human freedom and justice, and the violent breach o f the universal
solidarity of the human race.
The W orld State, which has been attempted so many times, has
always proved to be a failure. Consequently, so long as the State exists,
there will be several of them; and since every one of them sets as its only
aim and supreme law the maintenance of itself to the detriment of the
others, it follows that the very existence of the State implies perpetual
warthe violent negation of humanity. Every State must conquer or be
conquered. Every State bases its power upon the weakness of other powers
andif it can do it without undermining its own positionupon their
destruction.
From our point of view it would be a terrible contradiction and a
ridiculous piece of navet to avow the wish to establish international
justice, freedom, and perpetual peace, and at the same time to want to
retain the State. It would be impossible to make the State change its nature,
for it is such only because of this nature, and in foregoing the latter it
would cease to be a State. Thus there is not and there could not be a
good, just, and moral State.
A ll States are bad in the sense that by their nature, that is, by the
conditions and objectives of their existence, they constitute the very
opposite of human justice, freedom, and equality. And in this sense, what
ever one may say, there is not much difference between the barbarous
Russian Empire and the most civilized States o f Europe. W hat difference
there is consists in the fact that the Tsars Empire does openly what the
others do in an underhanded, hypocritical way. And the frank, despotic,
 Representative System Based on Fiction
ml contemptuous attitude of the Tsars Empire toward everything
humane constitutes the deeply hidden ideal toward which all European
statesmen aim and which they admire so greatly. A ll the European States
to the same things that Russia does. A virtuous State can be only an
impotent State, and even that kind of State is criminal in its thoughts and
a*pi rations.
Universal Federation of Producers Upon the Ruins of the State Urged.
1'hus I come to the conclusion: He who wants to join with us in the
establishment of freedom, justice, and peace, he who wants the triumph
of humanity, and the full and complete emancipation of the masses of the
people, should also aim toward the destruction of all States and the
establishment upon their ruins of a Universal Federation of Free Associa
tions of all the countries in the world.7

CHAPTER IQ Patriotism s Part

Patriotism Was Never a Popular Virtue. Was patriotism, in the com

plex meaning usually given to this term, ever a popular passion, a popular
virtue?
Basing myself upon the lessons o f history, I shall not hesitate in answer
ing this question with a resolute Nay/ And in order to prove to the reader
that I do not err in giving this answer, 1 will ask his permission to analyze
the principal elements which, combined in diverse ways, constitute what
is called patriotism.
T h e Components of Patriotism. Those elements are four in number:
t, The natural or physiological element; 2. the economic element; 3, the
political element; 4. the religious or fanatical element.
The physiological element is the chief foundation of all naive, instinc-
itvc, and brutal egoism. It is a natural passion, which, because it is too
naturalthat is, altogether animalis in flagrant contradiction to any kind
of politics, and, what is worse, it greatly handicaps the economic, scien
tific, and human development of society.
Natural patriotism is a purely bestial fact, to be found at every stage
of animal life and, one might even say, to be found up to a certain point,
wen in the plant world. Taken in this sense, patriotism is a war of
destruction, it is the first human expression o f the great and inevitable
 226 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

struggle for life which constitutes all the development, all the life o f the
natural or real worldan incessant struggle, a universal devouring o f one
another which nourishes every individual, every species, with the flesh
and blood of the individuals of other species, and which, inevitably
renewing itself in every hour, at every instant, makes it possible for the
stronger, more perfect, and intelligent species to live, prosper, and
develop at the expense of all the others.
. . . Man, the animal endowed with speech, introduces the first word
into this struggle, and that word is patriotism.
Hunger and Sex: the Basic Drives of the Animal World. The strug
gle for life in the animal and vegetable world is not only a struggle among
individuals; it is a struggle among species, groups, and families, a struggle
in which one is pitted against the other. In every living being there are
two instincts, two great dominant interests: food and reproduction. From
the point of view of nourishment every individual is the natural enemy
of all the others, ignoring in this respect all kinds of bonds which link
him with the family, group, and species.
. . . Hunger is a rude and invincible despot, and that is w hy the neces
sity of obtaining food, a necessity felt by the individual, is the first law,
the supreme condition o f life. It is the foundation of all human and social
life as well as of the life of animals and plants. T o revolt against it is to
annihilate life, to condemn oneself to mere non-existence. But along with
this fundamental law of living nature there is the equally essential law o f
reproduction. The first aims to preserve the individuals, the second aims
to form families, groups, species. And the individuals, impelled b y a
natural necessity, seek, in order to reproduce themselves, to mate with
other individuals who by their inner organization come the nearest to
them and most closely resemble them.1
Boundaries of Animal Solidarity Are Determined by Sexual Affinity.
Since the instinct of reproduction establishes the only tie of solidarity
existing among the individuals of the animal world, it follows that where
this capacity for mating ceases, tl/ere all animal solidarity ceases with it.
Whatever remains outside o f this possibility of reproduction for the
individuals, constitutes a different species, an absolutely foreign world,
hostile and condemned to destruction. And everything contained in this
world of sexual affinity constitutes the vast fatherland of the specieslike
humanity for men, for instance.
But this destruction, or the devouring of one another by living individ
uals, takes place not only outside the limits of the circumscribed world
which we call the fatherland of the species. W e find it also within this
worldin forms just as ferocious, or at times even more ferocious, than
that taking place outside of this world. This is true because of the resist
ance and rivalries which individuals encounter, and also because o f the
struggle prompted by sex rivalries, a struggle no less cruel and ferocious
227 Patriotisms Part in Mans Struggle
ilinn the one impelled by hunger. Besides, every animal species subdivides
into different groups and families, undergoing constant modifications
under the influence of the geographical and climatic conditions on their
respective habitats.
The greater or lesser difference in conditions o f life determines the
corresponding difference in the structure of the individuals belonging to
the same species. Besides, it is known that every individual animal naturally
seeks to mate with an individual which is most similar to it, a tendency
which naturally results in the development of the greatest number of
variations within the same species. And since the differences separating
those variations from one another are based mainly upon reproduction,
and since reproduction is the sole basis of ail animal solidarity, it is evident
that the greater solidarity of the species necessarily will subdivide into a
number o f solidarity spheres o f a more limited character, so that the
greater fatherlanc is bound to break up into a multitude o f small animal
fatherlands, hostile to and destructive of one another.
Patriotism a Passion of Group Solidarity. I have shown how patriot
ism, taken as a natural passion, springs from a physiological law, to be
exact, from the law which determines the separation of living beings into
species, families, and groups.
The patriotic passion is manifestly a passion o f social solidarity. In
order to find its clearest expression in the animal world, one has to turn
to those animal species which, like man, are endowed with a pre-eminently
social nature: for example, the ants, the bees, the beavers, and many others
which possess settled habitations in common, and also species that rove
in herds. The animals which live in a collective and fixed dwelling repre
sent, in its natural aspect, the patriotism of the agricultural people, while
the animals roving in herds represent the patriotism of nomadic peoples.
Patriotismthe Attachment to Settled Patterns of Life. It is evident
that the first is more complete than the latter, which implies only the
solidarity o f the individuals living in the herd, whereas the first adds to it
the bonds tying the individual to the soil or to his natural habitat. Habits
constituting second nature for men as well as for animalscertain pat
terns of life, are much more determined and fixed among social animals
which lead a settled life than among migratory herds; and it is these
different habits, these particular modes of existence, which constitute an
essential element of patriotism.
One can define natural patriotism as follows: It is an instinctive,
mechanical, uncritical attachment to the socially accepted hereditary or
traditional pattern of lifeand the same kind of an instinctive, automatic
hostility toward any other kind o f life. It is love for ones own and
aversion to anything having a foreign character. Patriotism then is collec
tive egoism on one hand, and war on the other.
Its solidarity, however, is not sufficiently strong to keep the individual
 2 28 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
members of an animal group from devouring one another when the need
arises; but it is sufficiently strong to make those individuals forget their
civil discords and unite each time that they are threatened with invasion
by another collective group.
Take, for instance, the dogs of some village. In the natural state dogs
do not form a collective republic. Left to their instinct, they live like
wolves, in roving packs, and it is only under the influence of man that
they become settled in their mode of life. But when attached to one place
they form in every village a sort of republic based upon individual
liberty in accordance with the formula so well loved b y bourgeois econ
omists: everyone for himself and the Devil take the hindmost. There an
unlimited laissez-faire and competition are in action, a civil war without
mercy and without truce, in which the strongest always bites the weaker
onejust as it is in the bourgeois republics. But let a dog from another
village happen to pass their street, and immediately you will see all those
brawling citizens of the canine republic hurl themselves en masse upon
the unfortunate stranger.
Yet is this not an exact copy, or rather the original, of the copies
repeating themselves from day to day in human society? Is it not the full
manifestation of that natural patriotism which, as I already have said,
and dare say again, is a purely bestial passion? It is without doubt bestial
in character inasmuch as dogs are incontestably beasts, and since man
himself, being an animal, like the dog and other animals upon the earth,
and the only one endowed with the physiological faculty of thinking and
speaking, begins his history with bestiality, and, after centuries of devel
opment, finally conquers and attains humanity in its most perfect form.
Once we know the origin of man, we should not wonder at his bestial
ity, which is a natural fact among so many other natural facts; nor should
we grow indignant about it, for what follows from this fact is that we
struggle against it still more vigorously, inasmuch as all human life is but
an incessant struggle against mans bestiality for the sake of his humanity.
T h e Bestial Origin of Natural patriotism. I simply wanted to estab
lish here that patriotism, extolled by poets, politicians of all schools, by
governments, and by all the privileged classes, as the highest and most
ideal virtue, has its roots not in the humanity of man but in his bestiality.
And indeed, we see natural patriotism reigning supreme at the begin
ning of history and in the present dayin the least civilized sectors of
human society. O f course, patriotism in human society is a much more
complex emotion than in other animal societies; this is so for the reason
that the life of man, an animal endowed with the faculties of thought and
speech, encompasses an incomparably larger world than that of the ani
mals of other species. W ith man the purely physical habits and customs
are supplemented by the more or less abstract traditions of an intellectual
and moral ordera multitude of true or false ideas and representations,
229 Patriotisms Part in Mans Struggle
which go together with various customs, religious, economic, political,
and social. AU that constitutes the elements o f natural patriotism in man,
in so far as those things, combining in one w ay or another, form, for a
given society, a particular mode of existence, a traditional pattern of
living, thinking, and acting, which differs from all other patterns.
But whatever differences, in respect to quantity and quality o f the
objects embraced, there may exist between the natural patriotism o f
human societies and that o f animal societies, they have this in common
that both are instinctive, traditional, habitual, and collective passions, and
that the intensity of one as well as o f the other does not depend upon the
character o f their content. One might say on the contrary that the less
complicated this content is, the more simple, more intense, and vigorously
exclusive is the patriotic feeling which manifests and expresses it.
Intensity of Natural Patriotism Is in Inverse R atio to the Deve|op>
ment of Civilization. Obviously animals are much more attached to
traditional customs of the society to which they belong than man. W ith
animals this patriotic attachment is inevitable; not being capable of freeing
themselves from such attachment through their own efforts, they often
have to wait for mans influence in order to shake it off. The same holds
true of human society: the less developed a civilization is, and the less
complex the basis of its social life, the stronger the manifestations of
natural patriotismthat is, the instinctive attachment of individuals to all
the material, intellectual, and moral habits which constitute the traditional
and customary life o f a particular society as well as their hatred for any
thing alien, anything different from their own life. So it follows that
natural patriotism is in inverse ratio to the development of civilization,
t hat is, to the triumph of humanity in human societies.
Organic Character of the Patriotism of Savages. N o one will deny
(hat the instinctive or natural patriotism of the wretched tribes inhabiting
(he Arctic zone, hardly touched b y human civilization and poverty-
stricken even in respect to bare necessities of material life, is infinitely
stronger and more exclusive than the patriotism of a Frenchman, an Eng
lishman, or a German, for example, l lt e Frenchman, the Englishman, and
the German can live and acclimatize themselves anywhere, whereas the
native o f the polar regions would pine away longing for his country were
he kept out of it. And still what could be more miserable and less human
than his existence! This merely proves once more that the intensity of this
kind of patriotism is an indication of bestiality and not of humanity.
Alongside this positive element o f patriotism, which consists in the
instinctive attachment of individuals to the particular mode of existence
of the society to which they belong, there is a negative element just as
essential as the first and inseparable from it. It is the equally instinctive
revulsion from everything foreign, instinctive and consequently alto
gether bestialyes, bestial indeed, for this horror is the more violent and
 2JO TH E PO L IT IC A L P H ILO SO P H Y OP B A K U N IN

overwhelming, the less the one experiencing it thinks o f it and understands

it, and the less of humanity there is in him.
Anti-Foreignism: Negative Aspect of Natural Patriotism. A t present
this patriotic revulsion from everything foreign is found only among
savage peoples; in Europe it can be found among the semi-savage layers of
population which bourgeois civilization has not deigned to educate, but
which, however, it never forgets to exploit. In the big capitals of Europe,
in Paris itself, and above all in London, there are slums abandoned to a
wretched population which no ray o f enlightenment has ever touched.
It is enough that a foreigner show up in those streets, and a throng o f those
ragged wretchesmen, women, and children, who show by their appear
ance signs of the most frightful poverty and the lowest state of degra
dation^will surround him, heap vile abuse upon him, and even maltreat
him, solely because he is a foreigner. This brutal and savage patriotism, is
it then not the most glaring negation of that which is called humanity?
I have said that patriotism, in so far as it is instinctive or natural, and
inasmuch as it has all its roots in animal life, presents only a particular
combination o f collective habitsmaterial, intellectual, moral, economic,
political, and socialdeveloped b y tradition or b y history, within a
limited group of human society. Such habits, I added, can be good or
bad, since the content or the object o f this instinctive feeling has no
influence upon the degree of its intensity.
Even if one had to admit in this respect the existence o f certain dif
ferences, one would have to say that they rather inclined toward bad
than toward good habits. Forb y virtue of the animal origin of all human
society and the effect of that force o f inertia, which exercises as powerful
an action in the intellectual and moral world as in the material w o r ld -
in every society which has not degenerated but which progresses and
marches ahead, bad habits have priority in point o f time, have become
more deeply rooted than good habits. This explains w h y out of the sum
total of the present collective habits prevailing in the most advanced
countries o f the world, nine tenths o f them are absolutely worthless.
Habits Are a Necessary Part of Social Life. But let it not be imag
ined that I intend to declare war upon the general tendency of men and
society to be governed b y habits. As in many other things, men necessarily
obey a natural law, and it would be absurd to rebel against natural laws.
The action o f habit in the intellectual and moral life o f the individual as
well as o f societies is the same as the action o f vegetative forces in animal
life. One and the other are conditions of existence and reality. The good
as well as the bad, in order to become a real fact, must be embodied in
habits, with man taken individually or in society. A ll the exercises, all the
studies, which men undertake, have no other aim but this, and the best
things can strike root and become second nature with a man only by
force of habit.
231 Patriotism's Part in Man's Struggle
It would be foolhardy to rebel against this force of habit, for it is a
necessary force which neither intelligence nor will can upset. But, if
enlightened b y the reason of our century and by the idea which we have
formed of true justice, we seriously want to rise to the full dignity of
human beings, we shall have to do only one thing: constantly to train and
direct our will powerthat is, the habit of willing things developed
within us b y circumstances that are independent of ustoward the extir
pation o f bad habits and their replacement with good ones. In order to
humanize society completely it is essential to destroy ruthlessly ail the
causes, all the political, economic, and social conditions which produce
traditions of evil in individuals, and to replace them with conditions which
will engender within the same individuals the practice and habit of good.
Natural Patriotisman Outgrown Stage. From the point o f view p i
modem conscience, of humanity and justicewhich we have come t o
understand the better owing to past developments of historypatriotism
is a bad, narrow, and baneful habit, for it is the negation o f human solidar
ity and equality. The social question, nowadays posed in a practical man
ner by the proletarian world of Europe and America, and the solution
of which is possible only through abolition o f State boundaries, neces
sarily tends to destroy this traditional habit in the consciousness o f the
workers of all countries.
Already at the beginning of the present [nineteenth] century, this
habit had been greatly undermined in the consciousness of the higher
financial, commercial, and industrial bourgeoisie, owing to the prodigious
and altogether international character of the development of its wealth
and economic interest.
But first I shall have to show how, long before this bourgeois revolu
tion, instinctive, natural patriotism, which by its very nature can be only
a very narrow, restricted social habit of a purely local character, had been
profoundly changed, distorted, and weakened at the very beginning
of history by the successive formation o f political States.
Natural Patriotism Necessarily Has Beep Local Roots. Indeed, patri
otism, in so far as it is a purely natural feelingthat is, a product of the life
of a social group united b y bonds of genuine solidarity and not yet en
feebled by reflection or b y the effect of economic and political interests
as well as religious abstractionsthis largely animal patriotism can embrace
only a very restricted world: a tribe, a commune, a village. A t the begin
ning of history, as is now the case with savage peoples, there was neither
nation, nor national language, nor national cultthere was not even any
country in the political sense of the word. Every small locality, every vil
lage, had its particular language, its god, its priest, or its sorcerer; it was
hut a multiplied, enlarged family, which, in waging war against all other
t ribes, denied by the fact o f its own existence all the rest of humanity. Such
is natural patriotism in its vigorous and simple crudity.
 232 TH E PO L IT IC A L P H ILO SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

W e still find vestiges o f this patriotism even in some of the most civi
lized countries of Europe, in Italy for example, especially in the Southern
provinces of that peninsula, where the physical contour of the earth, the
mountains, and the sea have set up barriers between valleys, villages, and
cities, separating and isolating them, rendering them virtually alien one to
another. Proudhon, in his pamphlet on Italian unity, observed with much
reason that this unity so far had been only an idea and a bourgeois idea at
that, and by no means a popular passion; that the rural population at least
remained to a very great extent aloof fromand I would add, even hostile
to it. For on the one hand, that unity militates against their local patriotism,
and on the other hand it has not brought them anything but ruthless
exploitation, oppression, and ruin.
W e have seen that even in Switzerland, especially in the most back
ward cantons, local patriotism often comes into conflict with the patriotism
o f the canton, and the latter with the political, national patriotism o f the
whole confederation of the republic.
March of Civilization Destroys Natural Patriotism. In conclusion I
repeat, b y w ay o f summing up, that patriotism as a natural feeling, being
in its essence and reality a purely local feeling, is a serious obstacle to the
formation o f States, and that consequently the latter, and along with them
civilization as such, could not establish themselves except b y destroying,
if not completely, at least to a considerable extentthis animal passion.2

c h a p t e r ,1 Class Interests in
Modern Patriotism

The very existence o f the State demands that there be some privileged
class vitally interested in maintaining that existence. And it is precisely the
group interests of this privileged class- that are called patriotism.1
This flagrant negation o f humanity which is the very essence of the
State is from the States point of view the supreme duty and the greatest
virtue; it is called patriotism and it constitutes the transcendent morality
of the State.2
True patriotism is of course a very respectable feeling, but at the same
time a narrow, exclusive, anti-human, and at times a simply bestial feeling.
A consistent patriot is one who, though passionately loving his fatherland
and everything that he calls his own, likewise hates everything foreign.*
Patriotism Without Freedom-~a T o ol of Reaction. Patriotism which
233 Class Interests in Modern Patriotism
aims toward unity that is not based upon freedom is bad patriotism; it is
blameful from the point o f view of the real interests of the people and of
the country which it pretends to exalt and serve. Such patriotism becomes,
very often against its will, a friend of reaction, an enemy o f revolution,
that is, o f the emancipation of nations and men.4
Bourgeois Patriotism. Bourgeois patriotism, as I view it, is only a
very shabby, very narrow, especially mercenary, and deeply anti-human
passion, having for its object the preservation and maintenance of the
power of the national Statethat is, the mainstay o f all the privileges of the
exploiters throughout the nation.6
The bourgeois gentlemen of all parties, even of the most advanced and
radical kind, cosmopolitan as they may be in their official views, whenever
it comes to making money b y exploiting to an ever greater extent the
work of the people, show themselves to be politically ardent and fanatical
patriots of the State, this patriotism being in fact, as it was well said by
M. Thiersthe illustrious assassin o f the Parisian proletariat and the actual
savior o f the present-day Francenothing else but the cult and the passion
of the national State.6
Bourgeois Patriotism Degenerates When Faced by Revolutionary
Movement of Workers. The latest events have proven that patriotism,
this supreme virtue o f the State, this soul animating the power of the
State, does not exist any more in France, In the upper classes it manifests
itself only in the form o f national vanity. But this vanity is already so
feeble, and already has been so much undermined b y the bourgeois neces
sity and habit of sacrificing ideal interests for the sake o f real interests that
during the last war [the Franco-Prussian conflict] it could not, even for a
short time, make patriots out o f storekeepers, businessmen, Stock Exchange
speculators, A rm y officers, bureaucrats, capitalists, and Jesuit-trained noble
men.
T h ey all lost their courage, they all betrayed their country, having
only one thing on their mindsto save their propertyand they all tried
to turn to their own advantage the calamity befalling France. AU of them,
with no exception, outdid one another in throwing themselves at the mercy
of the haughty victor who became the arbiter of French destinies. Unani
mously they preached submission, and meekness, humbly begging for
peace. . . . But now all those degenerate prattlers have become patriotic
and nationalistic again, and have taken to bragging, yet this ridiculous and
repulsive balderdash on the part o f such cheap heroes cannot obscure the
evidence of their recent villainy.
Patriotism of Peasants Undermined by Bourgeois Psychology. O f
still greater importance is the fact that the rural population of France did
not evince the slightest patriotism. Yes, contrary to the general expecta
tion, the French peasant, ever since he became a proprietor, has ceased to
be a patriot.
 234 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
In the period o f Joan of A rc, it was the peasants who bore the brunt
o f the fighting which saved France. And in 1792 and afterward it was
mainly the peasants who held off the military coalition of the rest of
Europe. But then it was quite a different matter. Owing to the cheap
sales o f the estates belonging to the Church and the nobility, the peasant
came to own the land which prior to that he had been cultivating in the
capacity of a slaveand that is w hy he justly feared that in the event of
defeat the migrs who followed in the wake of the German troops would
take away from him his recently acquired property.
But now he had no such fear, and he showed the utmost indifference to
the shameful defeat o f his sweet fatherland. In the central provinces of
France the peasants were chasing out the French and foreign volunteers
who had taken up arms to save France, refusing any aid to those volun
teers, frequently betraying them to the Prussians and, conversely, accord
ing the German troops a hospitable reception. Alsace and Lorraine,
however, must be counted as exceptions. There, strangely enough, as if to
spite the Germans, who persist in regarding those provinces as purely
German, there were stirrings of patriotic resistance.7
When Patriotism Turns Into Treason. N o doubt the privileged lay
ers o f French society would like to place their country in a position where
it would again become an imposing power, a splendid and impressive
power among the rest of the nations. But along with that they are also
moved b y greed, money-grubbing, the get-rich-quick spirit, and anti-
patriotic egoism, all of which make them quite willing to sacrifice the
property, life, and freedom o f the proletariat for the sake o f some patriotic
gain, but rather reluctant when it comes to giving up any o f their own
gainful privileges. T h ey would rather submit to a foreign yoke than yield
any of their property or agree to a general leveling o f rights and fortunes.
This is fully confirmed by events taking place before our eyes. W hen
the government of M. Thiers officially announced to the Versailles Assem
bly the conclusion of the final peace treaty with the Berlin Cabinet, by
virtue of which the German troops were to clear out o f the occupied
provinces of France in September, the majority o f that Assembly, repre
senting a coalition of privileged classes of France, were visibly depressed.
Stocks at the French Exchange, which represent those privileged interests
even more truly than the Assembly, dropped with this announcement, as
if heralding a genuine State catastrophe. . . . It turned out that to the
privileged French patriots, those representatives o f bourgeois valor and
bourgeois civilization, the hateful, forced, and shameful presence o f the
victorious army o f occupation was a source of consolation, was their main
stay and salvation, and to their minds the withdrawal of that army spelled
ruin and annihilation.
It is clear then that the rather strange patriotism o f the French bour
geoisie seeks its salvation in the shameful subjugation of their own country.
235 Class Interests in Modern Patriotism
Those who doubt it should look in the conservative magazines. Open the
pages of any of those magazines and you will find that they threaten the
French proletariat with the legitimate wrath of Prince Bismarck and his
Emperor. That is patriotism indeed! Yes, they simply invite Germanys
aid against the threatened Social Revolution in France.8
Only the City Proletariat Is Genuinely Patriotic. One can say with
full conviction that patriotism has been preserved only among the city
proletariat.
In Paris, as well as in all the other cities and provinces of France, it
was only the proletariat that demanded the arming o f the people and war
to the end. And strangely enough it was precisely this which aroused the
greatest hatred among the propertied classes, as if they took offense because
their lesser brothers (Gambettas expression) showed more virtue and
patriotic loyalty than the older brothers.
Proletarian Patriotism Is International in Scope. However, the well-
to-do classes were partly right. The proletariat was altogether moved by
patriotism in the ancient and narrow meaning of the word.
True patriotism is of course a very venerable but also a narrow, exclu
sive, anti-human, and at times a pure and simple bestial feeling. Only he
is a consistent patriot who, loving his own fatherland and everything of
his own, also hates passionately everything foreignthe very image, one
might say, o f our [Russian] Slavophiles. There is not a trace of this hatred
left in the city proletarian o f France. On the contrary, in the last decade
or one might say, beginning with 1848 and even much earlierunder the
influence o f Socialist propaganda, there was stirred up within him a
brotherly feeling toward the whole proletariat, and that went hand in
hand with just as decisive an indifference toward the so-called greatness
and glory o f France. The French workers were opposed to the war under
taken b y Napoleon III, and on the eve of that war, in a manifesto signed
by the members o f the Parisian section o f the International, they openly
declared their sincere fraternal attitude toward the workers of Germany.
The French workers were arming not against the German people but
against the German military despotism.9
Boundaries of the Proletariat Fatherland. The boundaries of the
proletarian fatherland have broadened to the extent of embracing now the
proletariat of the whole world. This o f course is just the opposite o f the
bourgeois fatherland. The declarations of the Paris Commune are in this
respect highly characteristic, and the sympathies shown now b y the French
proletariat, even favoring a Federation based upon emancipated labor and
collective ownership o f the means o f production, ignoring in this case
national differences and State boundariesthese sympathies and active
tendencies, I say, prove that so far as the French proletariat is concerned,
State patriotism is all in the past.10
Bourgeois Patriotism Exemplified by 1870 . Whatever the patriots o f
 236 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
the French State may say, much as they can boast now, it is clear that
France as a State is condemned to a second-rate position. Moreover, it
will have to submit to the supreme leadership, the friendly, solicitous influ
ence of the German Empire, just as it was with the Italian State which,
prior to 1870, submitted to the politics of Imperial France.
This situation, perhaps, suite well the French speculators who get their
consolations from the world Stock Exchange market, but it is hardly flat
tering from the point of view of national vanity held by the patriots o f
the French State. Until 1870 one might have thought that this vanity was
so strong that it would swing even the stoutest champions of bourgeois
privileges into the camp of the Social Revolution, if only to save France
from the shame of being overrun and conquered by Germans. But no one
can expect this from them after what took place in 1870. It is common
knowledge now that they will agree to any shame, even to submit to
German protectorship, rather than forego their profitable domination over
their own proletariat.11
Worship of Property Incompatible W ith T ru e Patriotism. [Destruc
tion of property] is incompatible with bourgeois consciousness, with bour
geois civilization, because it is all built upon fanatical worship of property.
The burgher or bourgeois will forego life, freedom, or honor, but he will
not yield his property. The very thought of encroaching upon it, of
destroying it for any purpose, appears sacrilegious to him. That is w hy
he will never agree to have his cities or houses destroyed, as demanded by
the defense aims. And that is why the French bourgeois in 1870 and the
German burghers of 1813 yielded so easily to the invaders. W e have seen
that it was enough for the peasants to come into ownership of property to
be corrupted and divested of the last spark of patriotism.12
In the eyes of all these ardent patriots, as well in the historically verified
opinion of M. Jules Favre, the Social Revolution holds for France a greater
danger than even invasion b y foreign troops. I would very much like to
believe that, if not all, at least the greater number of those worthy citizens
would willingly sacrifice their lives to save the glory, greatness, and inde
pendence of France. But, on the other hand, 1 am sure that a still greater
majority of them would prefer to see this noble France submit to the tem
porary yoke of the Prussians than to be indebted for their salvation to a
genuine popular revolution, which inevitably would destroy with one
blow the economic and political domination by their class. Hence their
revolting but forced indulgence for the so numerous and unfortunately
still powerful partisans of Bonapartist treason, and their passionate severity,
the ruthless persecution they loosed against the social revolutioniststhe
representatives of the working class who alone take seriously the freeing
of the country from the foreign yoke.13
 2 37 Law, Natural and Invented

c h a p t e r ii Law , N a tu ra l and Invented

Individual Freedom Is a Derivative of Society. Emerging from the

condition of the gorilla, man arrives only with difficulty at awareness of
his humanity and realization o f his liberty. In the beginning he has neither
liberty nor the awareness thereof; he comes into the world as a ferocious
beast and as a slave, and becomes humanized and progressively emancipated
only in the midst of a society which necessarily precedes the emergence
of mans thought, speech, and will. Man can attain this only through the
collective efforts of all the past and present members o f that society, which
therefore is the natural basis and starting point o f his human existence.
Hence it follows that man realizes his individual freedom only b y
rounding out his personality with the aid o f other individuals belonging
to the same social environment. He can achieve that only by dint of work
and the collective power of society, without which man would no doubt
remain the most stupid and miserable of all the wild animals living upon
the earth. According to the materialist system, which is the only natural
and logical system, society, far from limiting and detracting from the
freedom o f individuals, creates, on the contrary, this freedom. Society is
the root and the tree, and freedom is its fruit. Consequently, in every epoch
man has to seek his liberty not at the beginning but at the end o f history,
and one may say the real and complete emancipation o f every individual
is the true and the great objective, and the supreme end o f history.1
Origin of Ideas in General and of the Idea of Law in Particular.
This is not the place to inquire into the origin of the first notions and
ideas in primitive society. All we can say with full certainty is that those
ideas, most o f which were of course highly absurd, were not conceived
spontaneously by the miraculously enlightened intelligence of isolated
and inspired individuals. T hey were the product of the collective, in
many cases hardly perceptible, mental labor of all the individuals belong
ing to those societies. The contributions of outstanding men of genius
has never consisted in anything but their ability to give the most faithful
and felicitous expression to this collective mental labor, for all men of
genius, according to Voltaire, gathered everything that was good wher
ever they found it. Those ideas were at first only the most simple, and,
of course, quite inadequate representations of natural and social phenom
ena, and the even less valid conclusions inferred from those phenomena.
Such was the beginning of all human notions, fancies, and thoughts.
The subject matter of those thoughts was not the spontaneous creation
of mans mind, but was at first given to him by the actual worldwhether
external or internal. Mans mind, that is, the purely organic and conse-
 238 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
quently material functioning of his brain, stimulated b y external as well as
internal sensations transmitted by the nervesintroduced only the purely
formal comparison of those impressions of facts and things into true or
false systems. That was the origin of the first ideas. Through the medium
o f speech, those ideas, or rather those first products o f the imagination,
were given a more or less precise and invariable expression, in the process
of being handed down from one generation to the next. And thus the
products of individual imagination, mingling together, came to control,
vary, and complete one another, merging more or less into a single system
and ending b y constituting the general consciousness, the collective
thought, of society. This thought, handed down by tradition from one
generation to another, and ever more developed b y centuries o f mental
labor, constitutes the intellectual and moral heritage of society, class, and
nation.
Every new generation receives in its cradle a whole world o f ideas,
mental impressions, and feelings bequeathed to it by all the past centuries.
This world at first does not appear to the newly bom man in its ideal
form, as a system of notions and ideas, as a religion, nor as a doctrine. A
child is not capable of apprehending and comprehending it in this form.
Rather it is imposed upon the child as a world o f facts embodied and
realized in the people and things constituting the childs environment
from the first day o f his life, a world speaking to the child through every
thing he hears and sees. For man's ideas were at first nothing but the
product of actual facts, natural as well as social, in the sense that they
were their reflection or echo in man's brain, and, so to speak, their ideal
and more or less true reproduction b y means of this positively material
organ of human thought.
Innate Ideas. Later, having become solidly established in a well-
ordered system in the intellectual consciousness of a given society, they
become the causal agents o f new phenomena: phenomena of a social and
not o f a purely natural order. T hey end b y modifying and transforming,
very slowly to be sure, human customs and institutionsin a word, the
whole field of human interrelationships in society, and, by their embodi
ment in common objects, they become tangible and perceptible, even to
children. This process is so thorough that every new generation becomes
permeated with it from a tender age; and when it reaches the age of
maturity, when the work o f its own thought begins to assert itself,a
work accompanied b y new criticismit finds within itself, as well as in
the surrounding society, a whole world o f established thoughts and ideas
which serve as the starting point, the raw material, the texture, for its
own intellectual and moral labor. Those ideas comprise the traditional and
everyday notions created b y imagination which the metaphysicians,
deceived b y the wholly unsensory and unnoticeable w ay in which those
notions, coming from the outside, penetrate and impress themselves upon
239 Law, Natural and Invented
the childs brain, even before they reach his consciousness,erroneously
call innate ideas.
Such are the general or abstract ideas or godhead and soul, ideas
altogether absurd, but inevitable and necessary in the historical develop
ment of the human mind, which through the ages, only slowly arriving
at a rational and critical awareness of itself and its own manifestations, has
always started with absurdity in order to arrive at truth, and with slavery
in order to win freedom. Such are the ideas consecrated in the course o f
centuries b y general ignorance and stupidity, and likewise, o f course, b y
the interests of the privileged classesconsecrated to such an extent that
even now it is difficult to declare oneself against them in plain language
without arousing against oneself considerable sections of the people and
without running the hazard o f being pilloried b y bourgeois hypocrisy.
Along with these purely abstract ideas, and always closely connected
with them, the youth finds in societyand because o f the all-powerful
influence exerted upon him by society in his childhood, he also discovers
within himselfmany other notions or ideas which are much more deter
mined and nearer to mans real life and to his daily existence. Such are the
notions o f Nature, man, justice, the duties and rights of individuals and
classes, social conventions, family, property, the State, and many other
ideas regulating the relations of man to man.2
Authority and Natural Laws. W hat is authority? Is it the inevitable
power o f natural laws manifestating themselves in the concatenation and
necessary sequences of phenomena in the physical and social worlds?
Indeed, revolt against these laws is not only nonpermissible, but even
impossible. W e may ignore them or even not know them at all, but we
cannot disobey them, for they constitute the basis and the very condi
tions o f our existence; they envelop us, penetrate us, and govern all our
movements, thoughts, and acts to such an extent that even when we
believe we disobey them we in reality only manifest their omnipotence.
Yes, we are unconditionally the slaves o f these laws. But in such slavery
there is no humiliation, or rather it is not slavery at all. For slavery presup
poses the existence of an external master, a legislator standing above those
whom he commands, while those laws are not extrinsic in relation to us:
they are inherent in us, they constitute our nature, our whole being,
physically, intellectually, and morally. And it is only through those laws
that we live, breathe, act, think, and will. W ithout them we would be
nothing, we simply would not exist.3
It is a great misfortune that a large number o f natural laws, already
established as such by science, remain unknown to the masses, thanks to
tiic vigilance of the tutelary governments which, as we know, exist only
(or the good of the people. And another difficulty consists in the fact
(hat the major portion o f natural laws inherent in the development o f
human society and just as necessary, invariable, and inevitable as the laws
 24O T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
governing the physical world, have not been recognized and duly estab
lished b y science itself.
Universal Knowledge of Natural Laws Spells Abolition of Juridical
Right. Once they have been recognized by science, and then from science,
by means o f a broad system of popular education, have entered into the
general consciousness, the question of freedom will be solved. The most
obdurate protagonists o f the State must admit that when that takes place
there will be no need o f political organization, administration, or legislation
those three institutions which, whether they emanate from the will of
the sovereign or from the vote of a Parliament elected b y universal suf
frage, and even if they should conform to the system of natural laws
(which never has been the case and never will be)are ever equally
hostile and fatal to the liberty of the masses, for they impose upon them
a system o f external and therefore despotic laws.4
Political Legislation Is Inimical to Freedom of the People and Con
trary to Natural Laws. A scientific body entrusted with the government
o f society would soon end by devoting itself no longer to science at all,
but to quite another affair. And that affair, as in the case o f all established
powers, would be its own perpetuation by rendering the society entrusted
to its care ever more stupid and consequently ever more in need of its
government and direction.6
Legislative Institutions Breed Oligarchies. And that which is true
o f scientific academies also is true o f all constituent and legislative assem
blies, even those issuing from universal suffrage. In the latter case, to be
sure, they may renew their composition, but this does not prevent the
formation in a few years time o f a body o f politicians, privileged in fact
though not in law, who, devoting themselves exclusively to the administra
tion o f a nations public affairs, end b y forming a sort of political aristoc
racy or oligarchy, as can be seen by the example of Switzerland and of
the United States of America,
Thus it follows that no external legislation and no authority are
necessary; for that matter, one is inseparable from the other, while both
tend toward the enslavement o f society and the degradation of the legis
lators themselves.6
Political Rights and Democratic State Are Contradictions in Terms.
And finally, the terms themselves, equality of political rights, and demo-
cratic State, imply a flagrant contradiction. The State, raison dEtat, and
political law denote power, authority, domination; they presuppose inequal
ity in fact. W here all govern, no one is governed, and the State as such
does not exist. Where all equally enjoy human rights, all political rights
automatically are dissolved. Political law denotes privilege, but where all
are equally privileged, there privilege vanishes, and with that political
law is reduced to naught. Therefore the terms the democratic States and
 241 Law, Natural and Invented
equality of political rights connote nothing less nor more than destruction
of the State and abolition of all political rights.7
The Negation of Juridical Law. In a word, we reject all legislation-
privileged, licensed, official, and legaland all authority, and influence,
even though they may emanate from universal suffrage, for we are con
vinced that it can turn only to the advantage of a dominant minority of
exploiters against the interests o f the vast majority in subjection to them.
It is in this sense that we are really Anarchists.8
W e recognize all natural authority, and all influence of fact upon us,
but none of right; for all authority and all influence of right, officially
imposed upon us, immediately becomes a falsehodd and an oppression, and
because of this inevitably brings us to absurdity and slavery.9
T h e Various Kinds of Rights. It is necessary to distinguish clearly
between historic, political, or juridical right and rational or simply human
right. The first has ruled the world up to this very hour, making it a
receptacle for bloody injustices and oppressions. The second right shall
be the means o f our emancipation.10
The Essence of Right. The predominance and the abiding triumph
of force, that is the real core of the matter, and all that is called right in
the language of politics is nothing but the consecration o f fact created
by force.11
Rationalization of T heir Right by the Aristocracy and the Bourgeoisie.
The aristocracy of nobility did not need science to prove its right. Its
power rested upon two irrefutable arguments based upon violence, upon
brutal physical force and its consecration by G ods will. The aristocracy
committed violence, and the Church bestowed its benediction upon this
violence. Such was the nature of its right. It was this intimate bond between
the triumphing fist and divine sanction that gave the aristocracy its great
prestige, inspiring it with knightly valor which took all hearts b y storm.
The bourgeoisie, lacking any valor or grace whatsoever, can base its
right upon only one argument: the very prosaic but very substantial
power of money. It is the cynical denial of any virtue whatever: with
money every fool and brute, every scoundrel, can possess all sorts of
rights; without money all individual virtues do not amount to anything
this is the basic principle of the bourgeoisie in its brutal reality. It stands
to reason that this argument, valid as it might be in itself, is not sufficient
to justify and consolidate the power o f the bourgeoisie. Human society is
so constituted that the more evil things can be established in it only under
1he cloak of apparent respectability. Hence the adage: H ypocrisy is the
respect vice pays to virtue. Even the mightiest violence needs consecration.
The nobility disguised its violence with divine grace. The bourgeoisie
could not obtain that high patronage, . . . and therefore it had to seek
sanctions outside of God and the Church. And it did find such sanctions
among the licensed intellectuals.12
 242 TH E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
The Basis of the Past and Present Social Organization. AH the politi
cal and civil organizations existing in the past and the present rest upon
the following foundations: upon the historic fact of violence, upon the
right to inherit property, upon the family rights of the father and the
husband, and the consecration o f all these foundations b y religion. And
all that taken together constitutes the essence of the State.13
Convinced that the existence of the State, in any form whatever, is
incompatible with the freedom of the proletariat, and that it will not per
mit the fraternal international union o f peoples, we want the abolition of
all States.
W ith the State there must go also all that is called juridical right,
and all organization of social life from the top downward, via legislation
and governmentorganization which never had any other aim but the
establishment and systematization of the exploitation o f the labor o f the
people for the benefit of the ruling classes.
Abolition o f the State and juridical right will have for its sequel the
abolition of personal inheritable property and o f the juridical family, which
is based upon this property, since both preclude human justice.14
Abolition of the Right of Inheritance. This question [of abolishing
the right of inheriting property] falls into tw o partsthe first comprising
the principle, and the second the practical application of the principle.
And the question of the principle itself should be considered from two
points of view: that of expediency and that of justice.
From the point o f view of the emancipation o f labor, is it expedient, is
it necessary, that the right o f inheritance should be abolished?
T o pose this question is, in our opinion, to solve it. Can the emancipa
tion of labor signify any other thing but its deliverance from the yoke of
private property and capital? But how can those two be prevented from
dominating and exploiting labor if, divorced from labor as they are, they
are the exclusive monopoly of a class which, freed from the necessity of
working for a living, will continue to exist and crush labor by extracting
from it land rent and interest on capitala class which, made strong by
this position, seizes, as it has done up to now, the profits o f industry and
commerce, leaving to the workers, who are crushed b y the competition
into which they are driven, only that which is strictly necessary in order
to keep them from starving to death.
N o political or juridical law, drastic though it may be, will be able to
put a stop to this domination and exploitation, no law can prevail against
the power of facts, no one can prevent a given situation from producing
its natural results. From which it follows clearly that so long as property
and capital remain on one side and labor on the otherone constituting
the class of the bourgeoisie and the other that of the proletariat, the worker
will be the slave and the bourgeoisie the master.
But what is it that separates property and capital from labor? W hat con
 243 Lam, Natural and Invented
stitutes, economicaiiy and politically, the distinction between classes? W hat
is it that destroys equality and perpetuates inequality, the privileged status
of a small number o f people and the slavery of the great majority? It is
the right of inheritance,
Are any proofs necessary to show that the right o f inheritance begets
all the economic, political, and social privileges? It is evident that class
differences maintain themselves only by virtue of this right. Natural differ
ences among individuals, as well as the fleeting differences which are a
matter of luck or fortune and which do not outlive the individuals, per
petuate themselvesor become petrified, so to speakas a result of the
right of inheritance, and becoming traditional differences, they create
privileges o f birth, give rise to classes, and become a permanent source of
exploitation of millions of workers by mere thousands of noble birth.
So long as the right of inheritance is in force, there can be no economic,
social, or political equality in the world; and so long as inequality exists
there will be oppression and exploitation.
In principle then, from the point of view of the integral emancipation
of work and workers, we should want abolition of the right of inheritance.
Biological Heredity Not Denied. It stands to reason that w e do not
intend to abolish physiological heredity, or the natural transmission of bod
ily and intellectual faculties; or to be more precise, the transmission o f the
muscular and mental faculties of parents to their children. This transmission
is very often a misfortune, for it frequently passes on the physical and
moral maladies of the past to the present generations. But the baneful effects
of that transmission can be combated only by the application o f science
to social hygiene, individual as well as collective, and by a rational and
cquaiitarian organization of society.
W hat we want to and should abolish is the right o f inheritance, founded
by jurisprudence and constituting the very basis of the juridical family
and of the State.
The Right of Inheritance W ith Respect to Objects Having Sentimental
Value. But it should be understood that we do not intend to abolish the
right of inheritance with respect to objects that have a sentimental value
attached to them. B y that we mean the passing on to children or friends
of objects of small [money] value belonging to deceased parents or friends
and which because of long usage have retained a personal imprint. The
real heritage is that which assures to the heirs, whether in full or only in
part, the possibility of living without working by assessing collective labor
lor land rent or interest on capital. W e are o f the opinion that capital as
well as land, in a word, all the implements and the raw materials necessary
for labor, should no longer be transmitted through the right of inheritance,
and should forever become the collective property of all the productive
associations.
Equality, and consequently the emancipation of labor and of the work-
 244 T H E PO LITICAL, P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

ers, can be obtained only at this price. Few indeed are the workers who
do not realize that in the future abolition of the right of inheritance shall
be the supreme condition o f equality. But there are workers who fear
that if this right should be abolished at present, before a new social organi
zation has made secure the lot of all children, whatever the conditions
under which they were bom, their own children may find themselves in
distress after the death of their parents.
W hat! they say. W e scraped up, by hard work and great priva
tions, three or four hundred francs, and our children shall be deprived of
those savings! Yes, they shall be deprived o f them, but in exchange they
will receive from society, without prejudice to the natural rights of the
father and mother, maintenance and education and an upbringing that you
would not be able to provide for them even with thirty or forty thousand
francs. For it is evident that as soon as the right o f inheritance is abolished,
society will have to take upon itself the costs of the physical, moral, and
intellectual development o f all the children of both sexes who are bom in
its midst. It will become the supreme guardian of all those children.
Right of Inheritance and W ork Stimulus. Many persons maintain
that by the abolition of the right of inheritance there will be destroyed the
greatest stimulus impelling man to work. Those who so believe still con
sider work a necessary evil, or, in theological parlance, as the effect of
Jehovahs curse which he hurled in his wrath against the unfortunate
human species, and in which, b y a singular caprice, he has included the
whole of creation.
W ithout entering into a serious theological discussion, but taking as our
base the simple study of human nature, we shall answer the detractors o f
labor b y stating that the latter, far from being an evil or a harsh necessity,
is a vital need for every person who is in full possession of his faculties.
One can convince himself o f this b y submitting himself to the following
experiment: Let him condemn himself for a few days to absolute inaction,
or to sterile, unproductive, stupid work, and toward the end of it he will
come to feel that he is a most unfortunate and degraded human being. Man,
by his very nature, is compelled to work, just as he is compelled to eat,
to drink, to think, to talk.
If work is an accursed thing nowadays, it is because it is excessive,
brutalizing, and forced in character, because it leaves no room for leisure
and deprives men of the possibility o f enjoying life in a humane way,
and because everyone, or nearly everyone, is compelled to apply his pro
ductive power to a kind of work which is the least suitable for his natural
aptitudes. And finally, it is because, in a society based upon theology and
jurisprudence, the possibility o f living without working is deemed an honor
and a privilege, while the necessity o f working for a living is regarded as
a sign of degradation, as a punishment, and as a shame.
The day when work of mind and body, intellectual and physical, is
 245 Law, Natural and Invented
regarded as the greatest honor among men, as the sign of their manhood
and humanity, society will be saved. But that day will never arrive so
long as inequality reigns, and so long as the right of inheritance has not
been abolished.
W ill such an abolition be just?
But how could it be unjust if it is effected in the interests of everyone,
in the interests of humanity as a whole?
Origin of tfee Right of Inheritance. Let us examine the right of in
heritance from the point of view o f human justice.
A man, we are told, acquires by his labor ten thousand or a hundred
thousand, or perhaps a million francsshould he not have the right to
bequeath this sum to his children? W ould not [forbidding such a legacy]
be a violation of the natural right o f parents, an unjust spoliation?
T o begin with, it already has been proven many times that an isolated
worker cannot produce very much over and above what he consumes.
We challenge anyone to produce a real worker, that is, one who does not
enjoy any privileges, who earns tens o f thousands, hundreds o f thousands,
or millions o f francs. That would be a sheer impossibility. Therefore, if
in existing society there are individuals who earn such big sums, this comes
not as a result of their labor but is due to their privileged position; that is,
to a juridically legalized injustice. And since anything that is not derived
from ones own labor is necessarily taken from the labor of someone else,
we have a right to say that all such gains are nothing but a form of theft
committed b y persons in privileged positions with regard to collective
labor, and committed with the sanction of, and under the protection of,
the State.
Let us proceed with this analysis.
T h e Dead Hand of the Past. The law-protected thief dies. He passes
mi, with or without a testamentary will, his lands or his capital to his chil
dren or other relatives. This, we are told, is the necessary corollary of his
personal freedom and his individual right; his will is to be respected.
But a dead man is dead for good. Outside o f the altogether moral and
sentimental existence built up by the pious memories of his children, rela
tives, and friends (if he deserved such memories), or b y public recogni
tion (if he rendered some real service to the public)outside of that he
does not exist at all. Therefore he can have neither liberty, nor right, nor
personal will. Phantoms should not rule and oppress the world which
belongs only to living persons.
In order that he continue willing and acting after his death, it is neces
sary to have a juridical fiction or a political lie, and as this dead person is
incapable of acting for himself, it is necessary that some power, the State,
undertake to act in his name and for his sake; the State must execute the
will of a man who, being no longer alive, cannot have any will whatever.
And what is the power of the State, if not the power o f the people
 24<5 th e POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF BAKUNIN
as a whole, organized to the detriment of the people and in favor o f the
privileged classes? And above all, it is the production and the collective
force of the workers. Is it therefore necessary that the working classes
guarantee to the privileged classes the right of inheritance, that is, the
principal source of [the workers] misery and slavery? Must they forge
with their own hands the irons which keep them fettered?
Sequence of Abolition of Rights of Inheritance. W e conclude. It is
sufficient that the proletariat declare the withdrawal of its support from
the State, which sanctions its slavery, to have the right of inheritance,
which is exclusively political and juridicaland consequently contrary to
human rightcollapse all b y itself. It is enough to abolish the right of
inheritance in order to abolish the juridical family and the State.
A ll social progress, for that matter, has proceeded by w ay of successive
abolitions of rights o f inheritance.
The first to be abolished was the divine right o f inheritance, the tradi
tional privileges and chastisements which for a long time were considered
the consequence of the divine blessings or the divine curse.
Then the political right of inheritance was abolished, which had for its
consequence recognition of the sovereignty o f the people and equality o f
citizens before the law.
And now we must abolish the economic right of inheritance in order
to emancipate the worker, the man, and in order to establish the reign of
justice upon the ruins of all political and theological iniquities. . . .
Means of Abolishing the R ight of Inheritance. The last question to
be solved is the question of practical measures for the abolition of the
right o f inheritance. This abolition could be effected in two ways: through
successive reforms or by means of a social revolution.
It could be effected through reforms in those fortunate countries (the
very rare, or if not altogether unknown countries) where the class o f
property owners and capitalists, the bourgeoisie, imbued with a spirit of
wisdom which it now totally lacks, and realizing that the Social Revolution
finally is imminent, would try to come to a settlement with the world of
labor. In this case, but only in this case, the w ay of peaceful reforms pre
sents itself as a possibility. B y a series of successive modifications, cleverly
combined and amiably agreed upon by the worker and the bourgeoisie, it
would become possible to abolish the right of inheritance completely in
twenty or thirty years, and to replace the present form of property owner
ship, and of existing work and education, by collective property and col
lective labor, and by integral education or instruction.
It is impossible for us to determine the precise character of those re
forms, for they will have to conform to the particular situation in each
country. But in all the countries the goal remains the same: the establish
ment of collective property and labor, and the freedom of everyone with
equality for all.
 247 Law, Natural and Invented
The method of revolution will naturally be the shortest and simplest
one. Revolutions are never made b y individuals or associations. T h ey are
brought about b y the force of circumstances. It should be definitely under
stood among us that on the first day of the Revolution the right of inheri
tance shall simply be abolished, and along with that, the State and juridical
right, so that upon the ruins o f all these iniquities, cutting athwart all politi
cal and national frontiers, there may arise a new international world, the
world of labor, of science, of freedom, and o f equality, a world organized
from below upward, b y the free association of all producers associations.15
Rational or Human Right. Aiming at the actual and final emancipa
tion o f the people, we hold out the following program:

Abolition of the right of property inheritance.

Equalization of the rights of womenpolitical as well as socio-economic
rightswith those of men. Consequently, we want abolition of the family
right and of marriageecclesiastical as well as civil marriage[which are]
inseparably bound up with the right o f inheritance.
Basic economic truth rests upon two fundamental premises;
The land belongs only to those who cultivate it with their own hands:
to the agricultural communes. The capital and all the tools of production
belong to the workers: to the workers associations.
The future political organization should be a free federation of work
ers, a federation of producers associations o f agricultural and factory
workers.
And therefore, in the name o f political emancipation, we want in the
first place abolition o f the State, and the uprooting of the State principle,
with all the ecclesiastical, political, military, bureaucratic, juridical, aca
demic, financial, and economic institutions.

National Right. W e want full freedom for all nations, with the right
of full self-determination for every people in conformity with their own
instincts, needs, and will.16 Every people, like every person, can be only
what it is, and unquestionably it has the right to be itself.
This sums up the so-called national right. But if a people or a person
exists in a certain form and cannot exist in any other, it does not follow
that they have the right (nor that it would be o f any benefit to them) to
raise nationality in the one case or individuality in the other into specific
principles, or that they should make much ado about such alleged prin
ciples.17
 248 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

c h a p t e r i j Power and Authority

The Instinct for Power. A ll men possess a natural instinct for power
which has its origin in the basic law o f life enjoining every individual to
wage a ceaseless struggle in order to insure his existence or to assert his
rights. This struggle among men began with cannibalism; then continuing
throughout the centuries under various religious banners, it passed suc
cessively through all forms of slavery and serfdom, becoming humanized
very slowly, little b y little, and seeming to relapse at times into primitive
savagery. A t the present time that struggle is taking place under the double
aspect o f exploitation o f wage labor b y capital, and of the political, jurid
ical, civil, military, and police oppression b y the State and Church, and
b y State officials; and it continues to arouse within all the individuals bom
in society the desire, the need, and sometimes the inevitability of com
manding and exploiting other people.
T h e Power Instinct Is the Most Negative Force in History. Thus we
see that the instinct to command others, in its primitive essence, is a car
nivorous, altogether bestial and savage instinct* Under the influence o f the
mental development o f men, it takes on a somewhat more ideal form, and
becomes somewhat ennobled, presenting itself as the instrument o f reason
and the devoted servant o f that abstraction, or political fiction, which is
called the public good. But in its essence it remains just as baneful, and it
becomes even more so when, with the application of science, it extends
its scope and intensifies the power o f its action. If there is a devil in history,
it is this power principle, ft is this principle, together with the stupidity
and ignorance o f the masses, upon which it is ever based and without
which it never could exist,it is this principle alone that has produced all
the misfortunes, all the crimes, and the most shameful facts of history.
Growth of Power Instinct Determined by Social Conditions. And
inevitably this cursed element is to be found, as a natural instinct, in every
man, the best o f them not excepted. Everyone carries within himself the
germs of this lust for power, and every germ, as we know, because of a
basic law of life, necessarily must develop and grow, if only it finds in its
environment favorable conditions. These conditions in human society are
the stupidity, ignorance, apathetic indifference, and servile habits o f the
massesso one may say justly that it is the masses themselves that produce
those exploiters, oppressors, despots, and executioners of humanity, of
whom they are the victims. W hen the masses are deeply sunk in their
sleep, patiently resigned to their degradation and slavery, the best men in
their midst, the most energetic and intelligent of them, those who in a
different environment might render great services to humanity, necessarily
 249 Power and Authority
become despots. Often they become such by entertaining the illusion that
they are working for the good of those whom they oppress. On the con
trary, in an intelligent, wide-awake society, jealously guarding its liberty
and disposed to defend its rights, even the most egoistic and malevolent
individuals become good members of society. Such is the power of society,
a thousand times greater than that of the strongest individuals.1
Exercise of Power a Negative Social Determinant. Mans nature is so
constituted that, given the possibility of doing evil, that is, of feeding his
vanity, his ambition, and his cupidity at the expense of someone else, he
surely will make full use of such an opportunity. W e of course are all
sincere Socialists and revolutionists; and still, were we endowed with
power, even for the short duration of a few months, we would not be
what we are now. As Socialists we are convinced, you and I, that social
environment, social position, and conditions of existence, are more power
ful than the intelligence and will of the strongest and most powerful indi
vidual, and it is precisely for this reason that we demand not natural but
social equality of individuals as the condition for justice and the founda
tion of morality. And that is why we detest power, all power, just as the
people detest it.2
N o one should be entrusted with power, inasmuch as anyone invested
with authority must, through the force of an immutable social law, become
an oppressor and exploiter of society.8
W e are in fact enemies of all authority, for we realize that power and
authority corrupt those who exercise them as much as those who are com
pelled to submit to them. Under its baneful influence some become ambi
tious despots, lusting for power and greedy for gain, exploiters of society
for their own benefit or that of their class, while others become slaves.4
Exercise of Authority Cannot Be Claimed on the Ground of Science.
The great misfortune is that a large number of natural laws, already estab
lished as such by science, remain unknown to the masses, thanks to the
solicitous care of these tutelary governments that exist, as we know, only
for the good of the people. And there also is another difficulty: namely,
that the greater number of the natural laws inherent in the development o f
human society, which are quite as necessary, invariable, and inevitable as
the laws which govern the physical world, have not been duly recognized
and established by science itself.
Once they have been recognized, at first b y science and then by means
of an extensive system of popular education and instructiononce they
have become part and parcel of the general consciousnessthe question of
liberty will be solved. The most recalcitrant authorities will then have to
admit that henceforth there will be no need o f political organization, ad
ministration, or legislation. Those three thingswhether emanating from
(he will of the sovereign or issuing from the will of a Parliament elected
by universal suffrage, or even conforming to the system of natural laws
 25O T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
(which has never yet happened and never will happen)are always equally
baneful and hostile to the liberty of the people because they impose upon
the latter a system of external and therefore despotic laws.
Natural Laws Must Be Freely Accepted. The liberty of man consists
solely in that he obeys natural laws because he has recognized them as such
himself, and not because they have been imposed upon him by any external
will whateverdivine or human, collective or individual.
Dictatorship by Scientists. Suppose a learned academy, composed of
the most illustrious representatives of science; suppose this academy were
charged with legislation for, and the organization of, society, and that,
inspired only by the purest love for truth, it would frame none but laws
in absolute conformity with the latest discoveries of science. W ell, I
maintain that that legislation and that organization would be monstrosities,
and this for two reasons.
First, human science is always and necessarily imperfect, and, com
paring what it has discovered with what remains to be discovered, we may
say that it is still in its cradle. This is true to such an extent that were we
to force the practical life of men, collective as well as individual, into
strict and exclusive conformity with the latest data of science, we should
condemn society as well as individuals to suffer martyrdom on a Procrus
tean bed, which would soon end b y dislocating and stifling them, life
always remaining an infinitely greater thing than science.
The second reason is this: a society obeying legislation emanating from
a scientific academy, not because it understood the reasonableness of this
legislation (in which case the existence of that academy would become
useless) but because the legislation emanated from the academy and was
imposed in the name of science, which was venerated without being under
stoodthat society would be a society of brutes and not of men. It would
be a second edition of the wretched Paraguayan republic which submitted
so long to the rule of the Society of Jesus. Such a society would rapidly
sink to the lowest stage of idiocy.
But there is also a third reason rendering such a government impossible.
This reason is that a scientific academy invested, so to speak, with abso
lute, sovereign power, even if it were composed of the most illustrious
men, would unavoidably and quickly end by becoming morally and intel
lectually corrupted. Such has been the history of academies when the
privileges allowed them were few and scanty. The greatest scientific genius,
from the moment that he becomes an academician, an officially licensed
savant, inevitably deteriorates and becomes sluggish. He loses his spon
taneity, his revolutionary boldness, that wild and troublesome characteristic
of the greatest geniuses who are always called upon to destroy old decrepit
worlds and lay the foundations of new worlds. Doubtless our academician
gains in good manners, in worldly and utilitarian wisdom, what he loses
in power of thought.
251 Power and Authority
Scientists Are Not Excepted From the Workings of the Law of
Equality. It is the characteristic of privilege and o f every privileged
position to destroy the minds and hearts of men. A privileged man, whether
politically or economically so, is a man depraved intellectually and morally.
This is a social law which admits of no exception, and which is equally
valid with respect to entire nations as well as social classes, social groups,
and individuals. It is the law of equality, the supreme condition of free
dom and humanity.
A scientific body entrusted with the government of society would
soon end b y devoting itself no longer to science but to some other effort.
And this effort, as is the case with all established powers, would be to
try to perpetuate itself by rendering the society entrusted to its care ever
more stupid and consequently more in need of its direction and government.
And that which is true of scientific academies is equally true of all
constituent assemblies and legislative bodies, even those elected on the basis
of universal suffrage. It is true that the make-up o f these latter bodies can
be changed, but that does not prevent the formation in a few years time
of a body o f politicians, privileged in fact if not in law, and who, devoting
themselves exclusively to the direction of the public affairs of a country,
end by forming a sort of political aristocracy or oligarchy. Witness the
United States of America and Switzerland.
Thus no external legislation and no authority are necessary; for that
matter, one is separable from the other, and both tend to enslave society
and to degrade mentally the legislators themselves.6
In the good old times when the Christian faith, still unshaken and mainly
represented by the Roman Catholic Church, flourished in all its might, God
had no difficulty in designating his elect. It was understood that all the
sovereigns, great and small, reigned by the grace of God, if only they
were not excommunicated; the nobility itself based its privileges upon
the benediction o f the H oly Church. Even Protestantism, which contrib
uted powerfully toward the destruction of faith, against its will of course,
left, in this respect at least, the Christian doctrine wholly intact. For there
is no power (it repeated the words o f St. Paul) but of G od. Protestantism
even reinforced the authority o f the sovereign by proclaiming that it pro
ceeded directly from God, without needing the intervention of the Church,
and by subjecting the latter to the power of the sovereign.
But ever since the philosophy of the last century [the eighteenth],
acting in union with the bourgeois revolution, delivered a mortal blow to
faith and overthrew all the institutions based upon that faith, the doctrine
of authority has had a hard time re-establishing itself in the consciousness
of men. The present sovereigns continue, of course, to designate them
selves as rulers by the grace of God, but these words which once pos
sessed a meaning that was real, powerful, and palpitating with life, are
now considered b y the educated classes and even b y a section o f the
 252 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
people itself, as an obsolete, banal, and essentially meaningless phrase.
Napoleon III tried to rejuvenate it b y adding to it another phrase: and
b y the will o f the people, which, added to the first one, either annuls its
meaning and thereby becomes annullled in turn, or signifies that God
wills whatever the people will.
W hat remains to be done is to ascertain the will of the people and to
find out which political organ faithfully expresses that will. The Radical
Democrats imagine that it is an Assembly elected on the basis of universal
suffrage that will prove to be the most adequate organ for that purpose.
Others, even more radical democrats, add to it the referendum, the direct
voting of the whole people upon every more or less important law. A ll o f
themconservatives, liberals, moderates, and extreme radicalsagree on one
point, that the people should be governed; whether the people themselves
elect their rulers and masters, or such are imposed upon thembut rulers
and masters they should have. Devoid of intelligence, the people should
let themselves be guided by those who do possess such intelligence.
T h e Reason of the Privileged Classes in the Light of T h eir Acceptance
of Barbarous Dictatorship. Whereas in past centuries authority was de
manded in the name of God, now the doctrinaires demand it in the name
o f reason. It is not any more the priests of a decayed religion who demand
power, but the licensed priests of the doctrinaire reason, and this is done
at a time when the bankruptcy of that reason has become evident. For
never did educated and learned peopleand in general the so-called en
lightened classesshow such moral degradation, such cowardice, egoism,
and such a complete lack of convictions as in our own days. Because of
this cowardice they have remained stupid in spite of their learning, under
standing only one thingand that is to conserve whatever exists, madly
hoping to arrest the course of history with the brutal force o f a military
dictatorship before which they now have shamefully prostrated themselves.
Moral Bankruptcy of the Old Intelligentsia. Just as in the days of
old the representatives of divine reason and authoritythe Church and the
prieststoo obviously allied themselves with the economic exploitation of
the masseswhich was the principal cause o f their downfallso now have
the representatives of mans reason and authority, the State, the learned
societies, and the enlightened classestoo obviously identified themselves
with the business of cruel and iniquitous exploitation to retain the slightest
moral force or any prestige whatever. Condemned b y their own con
science, they feel themselves exposed, and have no other recourse against
the contempt which, as they know, has been well merited b y them, but
the ferocious arguments of an organized and armed violence. A n organiza
tion based upon three detestable thingsbureaucracy, police, and a stand
ing armythis is what now constitutes the State, the visible body of the
exploiting and doctrinaire reasoning o f the privileged classes.
Emergence of a New Reasoning and the Rise of a Libertarian Outlook.
25? Power and Authority
In contrast to this rotting and dying reasoning a new, young, and vigorous
spirit is awakening and crystalizing in the midst of the people. It is full
of life and hope for the future; it is of course not yet fully developed with
respect to science, but it eagerly aspires toward a new science cleared from
all the stupidities of metaphysics and theology. This new logic will have
neither licensed professors nor prophets nor priests, nor, drawing its power
from each and all, will it found a new Church or a new State. It will
destroy the last vestiges o f this cursed and fatal principle o f authority,
human as well as divine, and, rendering everyone his full liberty, it will
realize the equality, solidarity, and fraternity o f mankind.6
T h e Proper Role and Function of the Expert. Does it follow that I
reject all authority? N o, far be it from me to entertain such a thought.
In the matter o f boots, I defer to the authority of the bootmaker. W hen
it is a question of houses, canals, or railroads, consult the authority o f
the architect or engineer. For each special type of knowledge I apply to
the scientist o f that respective branch. I listen to them freely, and with
all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, and their
knowledge, though always reserving m y indisputable right o f criticism
and control. 1 do not content myself with consulting a single specialist
who is an authority in a given field; I consult several of them. I compare
their opinions and I choose the one which seems to me the soundest.
But 1 recognize no infallible authority, not even on questions of an
altogether special character. Consequently, whatever respect I may have
for the honesty and sincerity of such and such individuals, l have no abso
lute faith in any person. Such faith would be fatal to my reason, to my
liberty, and to the success o f my undertakings: it would immediately trans
form me into a stupid slave, an instrument o f the will and interests of
others.
If I bow before the authority of the specialists and declare myself
ready to follow, to a certain extent and so long as it may seem to me to be
necessary, their general indications and even their directions, it is became
their authority is imposed upon me b y no one, neither b y men nor by
(iod. Otherwise I would reject them with horror and send to the Devil
their counsels, their directions, and their knowledge, certain that they
would make me pay, by the loss o f m y liberty and self-respect, for such
odd bits of truth enveloped in a multitude of lies, as they might give me.
I bow before the authority o f specialists because it is imposed upon
me by my own reason. I am aware o f the fact that I can embrace in all
its details and positive developments only a very small part o f human
knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to the task of
embracing the whole. Hence there results, for science as well as for in
dustry, the necessity of division and association of labor. I take and I give
-such is human life. Each is an authoritative leader and in turn is led by
others. Accordingly there is no fixed and constant authority, but a con-
 254 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
tinual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority
and subordination.
Government By Supermen. This same reason forbids me, then, to
recognize a fixed, constant, and universal authority, for there is no uni
versal man capable of embracing all the sciences, all the branches o f social
life, in ail their wealth o f details, without which the application o f science
to life is impossible. And if such universality ever could be realized in a
single man, and if he wanted to make use of that universality to impose
his authority upon us, it would be necessary to drive that man out o f
societybecause the exercise o f such authority by him would reduce all
the others to slavery and imbecility.
I do not believe that society ought to maltreat men o f genius as it has
done up to now; but neither do I believe that it should pamper them, still
less accord them any exclusive privileges or rights whatever. And that
is so for three reasons: first, because it has often happened that society
mistook a charlatan for a man o f genius; second, because, through such a
system of privileges, it might transform even a real man of genius into a
charlatan, demoralize and degrade him; and finally, because it might thus
set up a despot over itself.
I recapitulate. W e recognize, then, the absolute authority o f science,
for science has for its object only the mentally elaborated reproduction, as
systematic as possible, o f the natural laws inherent in the material, intel
lectual, and moral life o f both the physical and social worlds, those two
worlds constituting in fact one and the same natural world. Outside of this
only legitimate authority, legitimate because it is rational and is in har
mony with human liberty, we declare all other authorities false, arbitrary,
and fatal.
Authority of Science Is Not Identical W ith Authority of Savants.
W e recognize the absolute authority o f science, but we reject the infalli
bility and universality of the representatives o f science. In our Church
if I may be permitted to use for a moment an expression which otherwise
I detest; Church and State are m y two bugbearsin our Church, as in the
Protestant Church, we have a chief, an invisible Christ, science; and, like
the Protestants, being even more consistent than the Protestants, we will
suffer neither Pope, nor Council, nor conclaves of infallible Cardinals, nor
Bishops, nor even priests. Our Christ differs from the Protestant and
Christian Christ in thisthat the latter is a personal being, while ours is
impersonal. The Christ of Christianity, already completed in an eternal
past, appears as a perfect being, whereas the completing and perfecting of
our Christ, science, are ever in the future; which is equivalent to saying
that these ends never will be realized. So, in recognizing absolute science as
the only absolute authority, we in no way compromise our liberty.
Absolute Science Is a Dynamic Concept of an Infinite Process of
Becoming. B y the words absolute science I mean the truly universal
255 Power and Authority
science which would reproduce ideally, to its full extent and in all its
infinite detail, the universe, the system, or the co-ordination o f all the
natural laws manifested by the incessant development of worlds. It is evi
dent that such a science, the sublime object of all the efforts of the human
mind, will never be fully and absolutely realized. Our Christ, then, will
remain uncompleted throughout eternity, a circumstance which must take
down the pride of his licensed representatives among us. Against God the
Son, in whose name they assume to impose upon us their insolent and
pedantic authority, we appeal to God the Father, who is the real world,
the real life, of which he (the Son) is only a too imperfect expression
whereas we, real beings, living, working, struggling, loving, aspiring, enjoy
ing, and suffering, are its direct representatives.
But, while rejecting the absolute, universal, and infallible authority o f
men of science, w e willingly bow before the respectable, although relative,
temporary, and closely restricted authority of the representatives of special
sciences, asking for nothing better than to consult them b y turns, and feel
ing very grateful for such valuable information as they may want to
extend to uson condition, however, that they be willing to receive similar
counsel from us on occasions when, and concerning matters about which,
we are more learned than they.
In general, we ask nothing better than to see men endowed with great
knowledge, great experience, great minds, and above all great hearts, exer
cise over us a natural and legitimate influence, freely accepted, and never
imposed in the name o f any official authority whatevercelestial or ter
restrial. W e accept all natural authorities and all influences o f fact, but none
of right; for every authority and every influence of right, officially imposed
us such, becoming directly an oppression and a falsehood, would inevi
tably impose upon us . . . slavery and absurdity.7
T h e Authority Flowing From the Collective Experience of Free and
iq u al Men. The only great and omnipotent authority, at once natural
und rational, the only one which we may respect, will be that of the
collective and public spirit of a society founded on equality and solidarity
and the mutual human respect of all its members.
Yes, this is an authority which is not at all divine, which is wholly
human, but before which we shall bow willingly, certain that, far from
enslaving them, it will emancipate men. It will be a thousand times more
powerful than all your divine, theological, metaphysical, political, and
judicial authorities, established b y the Church and State, more powerful
iban your criminal codes, your jailers, and your executioners.8
T h e Ideal of Anarchism. In a word, we reject all privileged, licensed,
official, and legal legislation and authority, even though it arise from uni
versal suffrage, convinced that it could turn only to the benefit o f a domi
nant and exploiting minority, and against the interests o f the vast enslaved
majority. It is in this sense that we are really Anarchists.
 z$6 TH E PO L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

c h a p t e r ,4 State Centralization
and Its Effects

Political Centralization Is Destructive of Liberty. The political cen

tralization created b y the Radical Party [of Switzerland] is destructive of
liberty. . . . T he old regime of cantonal autonomy guaranteed the freedom
and national independence of Switzerland much better than the present
system o f centralization.
If liberty has of late made notable progress in several of the erstwhile
reactionary cantons, it is not at all due to the new powers with which the
Constitution of 1848 invested the federal authorities; this [the progress in
backward cantons] is due solely to intellectual development meanwhile,
and to the march of time. A ll the progress achieved since 1848 in the
federal domain is of the economic order, like the introduction o f a single
currency, a single standard o f weights and measures, large scale public
works, commercial treaties, etcetera.
Economic and Political Centralization. It will be contended that eco
nomic centralization can be attained only b y political centralization, that
one implies the other, and that both are necessary and beneficial to the
same extent. N ot at all, we say. Economic centralization, the essential con
dition o f civilization, creates liberty; but political centralization kills it,
destroying for the benefit of the government and the governing classes the
life and spontaneous action of the population. Concentration o f political
power can produce only slavery, for freedom and power are mutually
exclusive. Every government, even the most democratic one, is the natural
enemy of freedom, and the stronger it is, the more concentrated its power,
the more oppressive it becomes. These truths, for that matter, are so simple
and clear that one feels ashamed in having to repeat them.1
T h e Lesson of Switzerland. The experience of the last twenty-two
years [1848-1870] shows that political centralization has likewise proven
fatal to Switzerland. It destroys the liberty of the country, endangers its
independence, turns it into a complacent and servile gendarme in the serv
ice o f all the powerful despots of Europe. In reducing its moral force,
political centralization jeopardizes the material existence of the country.2
T h e Last W ord in Political Centralization. Cavaignac, who rendered
such valuable service to both the French and international reaction, was,
however, a man of sincere republican convictions* Is it not remarkable that
it was a republican who was destined to lay the first basis for the military
dictatorship in Europe, to be the forerunner, in the direct line of Napoleon
III and the German Emperor; just as it was the lot o f another republican,
 257 State Centralization and Its Effects
his famous predecessor, Robespierre, to pave the road for the State despot
ism personified b y Napoleon? Does it not prove that the all-absorbing and
overwhelming military disciplinethe ideal of the pan-German Empireis
the inevitable last word in bourgeois State centralization, in bourgeois
civilization?
Centralization in Germany. Whatever the case may be, the noble
men, the bureaucracy, the ruling caste, and the princes conceived a great
liking for Cavaignac, and, greatly aroused by his success, they visibly took
courage and began preparing for new struggles.8
The conquered rich provinces, and the immense quantities of cap
tured war materials, have enabled Germany to maintain a huge standing
tinny. The creation o f the Empire and its organic subjection to the Prussian
autocracy, the building and arming of new fortresses, and, finally, the
building of the fleetall that, o f course, has contributed greatly toward the
strengthening of German might. But its cheif support consists above all in
the deep and undeniable popular sympathy.
As one of our Swiss friends has said; N o w every German tailor living
in Japan, China, and Moscow feels behind him the German N avy and the
whole German power. And this proud realization makes him madly exul
tant. A t last the German has come to see the day when, leaning upon the
armed might of the State, he can say, just as proudly as the Englishman or
the American [speaks of his own nationality], I am a German. True,
hut the Englishman or the American, in saying I am an Englishman or
1 am an American, says thereby 1 am a free man, while the German
Miys I am a slave, but my Emperor is stronger than all the other sovereigns,
and the German soldier, who is strangling me, will finally have strangled
at] of you.
T h e German People T u rn Toward Discipline. W ill the German
people content themselves for long with this realization? W ho can say?
The Germans have been yearning so long for a single [totalitarian]
Slate with a single stickthat they probably will be enjoying their present
bliss for a long time. Every people to its taste, and the taste of the German
people runs toward a stout stick to be wielded by the State.
Moral Effects of State Centralization. N o one can seriously doubt
i hat with State centralization rampant, there will beginfor that matter,
i here already has begunto develop in Germany all the evil principles, all
i he corruption, all the causes o f inner disintegration which always go hand
m hand with political centralization.
One can doubt it the less inasmuch as this process of moral and intel
lectual disintegration already has set in; one has only to read the German
magazines, of conservative or moderate orientation, to find there descrip
tor is of the corruption sweeping through the German public, which until
now, as we know, has been the most honest in the world.
This inevitable result of capitalist monopoly is always and everywhere
 258 TH E P O L IT IC A L PH ILO SO PH Y OF B A K U N IN
accompanied by the intensification and extension of State centralization.4
Political Centralization Instrumental in Distorting Political Progress
of French Nation. W e are convinced that if France twice lost its free
dom, and saw its democratic republic turn into a military dicatorship, the
fault does not lie with the character of the people, but with political cen~
tralization. This centralization, long since prepared by the French kings and
statesmen, later personified in a man whom the fawning rhetoric of the
court named the Great King, then hurled into the abyss by the shameful
disorders o f a decrepit monarchythis political centralization would have
perished in the mire, had it not been raised by the mighty hand of the
Revolution. Yes, strange indeed, that great Revolution, which for the first
time in history had proclaimed the liberty not only of the citizen but of
man, by making itself the heir o f the monarchy which it had destroyed,
revived at the same time this negation of all liberty: centralization and
omnipotence of the State.
Recreated by the Constituent Assembly and combated, although with
little success, by the Girondists, this political centralization was completed
by the National Convention. Robespierre and Saint-Just were the true
restorers o f centralization. Nothing was overlooked b y this new govern
mental machine, not even the Supreme Being with the cult o f the State.
This machine awaited only a clever mechanic to show to the astonished
world the possibilities for powerful oppression with which it had been en
dowed by its imprudent builders . . . and then came Napoleon.
Thus this Revolution, which at first was inspired b y love for liberty
and humanity, only because it came to believe in the possibility of recon
ciling those two concepts with State centralization, committed suicide, and
killed both, begetting in their place only a military dictatorship, Caesarism.
Federalism the Political Ideal of a New Society. Is it not clear then,
gentlemen, that in order to save liberty and peace in Europe, we ought to
oppose to this monstrous and oppressive centralization of the military,
bureaucratic, despotic, monarchic, constitutional, or even republican States,
the great salutary principles of federalism?
Henceforth it ought to be clear to all those who really want the eman
cipation o f Europe that, while retaining our sympathies for the great
Socialist and humanitarian ideas proclaimed by the French Revolution, we
must reject its State policy and resolutely adopt the policy of liberty pur
sued by the Americans of the North.5
 259 The Element of Discipline

c h a p t e r i 5 The Element o f Discipline

T h e Mystic Cult of Authority in the France of Napoleon III. W ith

discipline and confidence it is the same as with union. AH those are excel
lent things when put in the right place, but they are disastrous when applied
to people who do not deserve them. Passionate lover o f freedom that I
am, I confess that I greatly distrust those who always have the word
discipline on their lips. It is exceedingly dangerous, especially in France,
where most o f the time discipline signifies despotism on one hand and
automatism on the other. In France the mystic cult of authority, the love
of commanding and the habit of submitting to orders, has destroyed in
society, as well as among the vast majority of individuals, every feeling
for liberty and all faith in the spontaneous and living order which liberty
alone can create.
Speak to them of liberty, and they raise an outcry about disorder. For
it seems to them that no sooner would this ever oppressive and violent
discipline o f the State stop functioning than everyone would be at the
next ones throat and society would have collapsed. Therein lies the
astounding secret o f the slavery which French society has put up with
ever since its Great Revolution. Robespierre and the Jacobins bequeathed
to it the cult o f State discipline. This cultwhich you will find in its
entirety among your bourgeois republicans, whether official or officious
is now ruining France.
It is ruining it by paralyzing the only source and the only means of
deliverance that is left open to itthe unleashing of the popular forces of
the country. It is ruining France b y making it seek salvation in authority
and the illusory action of the State, which at the present moment repre
sents only vain despotic pretensions going hand in hand with absolute
impotence.
Freedom Is Compatible with Discipline. Hostile as I am to that which
in France is called discipline, nevertheless I recognize that a certain kind
of discipline, not automatic but voluntary and thoughtful discipline, which
harmonizes perfectly with the freedom o f individuals, is, and ever will be,
necessary when a great number o f individuals, freely united, undertake any
kind of collective work or action. Under those conditions, discipline is
simply the voluntary and thoughtful co-ordination o f all individual efforts
(oward a common goal.
A t the moment o f action, in the midst o f a struggle, the roles are natu
rally distributed in accordance with everyones attitudes, evaluated and
judged by the whole collective; some direct and command, while others
execute commands. But no function remains fixed and petrified, nothing is
 2O THE PO L IT IC A L P H ILO SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
irrevocably attached to one person. Hierarchic order and advancement do
not exist, so that the executive of yesterday may become the subordinate o f
today. N o one is raised above the others, or, if he does rise for some time,
it is only to drop back at a later time into his former position, like the
sea wave ever dropping back to the salutary level o f equality.
T h e Diffusion of Power. In such a system power, properly speaking,
no longer exists. Power is diffused in the collective and becomes the sin
cere expression of the liberty o f everyone, the faithful and serious realiza
tion of the will of all; everyone obeys because the executive-for-the-day
dictates only what he himself, that is, every individual, wants.
This is the only true human discipline, the discipline necessary for the
organization of freedom. It is not this kind o f discipline that is preached
by the republican statesmen. T h ey want the old French discipline, auto
matic, routine-like, blind discipline. T h ey want a chief, not freely elected
and for only one day, but one that is imposed b y the State for a long
time, if not forever; this executive commands and the rest obey. The sal
vation of France, they tell youand even the freedom of Franceis possible
only at this price. Thus passive obediencethe foundation of every des
potism -will be the cornerstone upon which you are going to found
your republic.
But if this chief of mine orders me to turn m y weapons against this
very republic, or to betray France to the Prussians, must I or must I not
obey such an order? If I obey, I betray France; if I disobey, I violate,
I break the discipline which you want to impose upon me as the only
means of salvation for France.
Authoritarian Discipline in the Face of the Profound Political Crisis
of 1871 . And do not tell me that this dilemma which I ask you to solve
is an idle problem. N o, it is a problem of palpitating urgency, for it is
with the painful choices of this dilemma that the soldiers are now faced.
W ho does not know that their chiefs, their generals, and the great majority
of their superior officers, are devoted body and soul to the Imperial regime?
W ho does not know that they are everywhere openly conspiring and
plotting against the Republic? W hat are the soldiers to do? If they obey,
they will betray France. And if they disobey, they will destroy what is
left of your regular Arm y.
Revolution Destroys Blind Discipline. For the republicans, for the
partisans of the State, o f public order and discipline, this dilemma is insol
uble. But for us revolutionary Socialists it does not present any difficulty.
Yes, they should disobey, they should revolt, they should break this disci
pline and destroy the present organization of the regular Arm y, they
should destroy, in the name of the salvation o f France, this phantom State,
powerless to do good, but powerful for evil.1
 P A R T III

The System o f Anarchism

c h a p t e r i Freedom and Equality

Natural and Man-Made Laws. Man can never be altogether free in

relation to natural and social laws.1
W hat is freedom? W hat is slavery? Does mans freedom consist in
revolting against all laws? W e say N o, in so far as laws are natural, eco
nomic, and social laws, not authoritatively imposed but inherent in things,
in relations, in situations, the natural development o f which is expressed by
those laws. W e say Yes if they are political and juridical laws, imposed by
men upon men: whether violently b y the right o f force; whether b y deceit
and hypocrisyin the name of religion or any doctrine whatever; or
finally, b y dint of the fiction, the democratic falsehood called universal
suffrage.2
Man Cannot Revolt Against Nor Escape from Nature. Against the
laws o f Nature no revolt is possible on the part o f man, the simple reason
being that he himself is a product of Nature and that he exists only b y
virtue o f those laws. A rebellion on his part would be . . . a ridiculous
attempt, it would be a revolt against himself, a veritable suicide. And
when man has a determination to destroy himself, or even when he carries
out such a design, he again acts in accordance with those same natural
laws, from which nothing can exempt him: neither thought, nor will, nor
despair, nor any other passion, nor life, nor death.
Man himself is nothing but Nature. His most sublime or most monstrous
sentiments, the most perverted, the most egoistic, or the most heroic
resolves or manifestations of his will, his most abstract, most theological,
or most insane thoughtsall that is nothing else but Nature. Nature envel
ops, permeates, constitutes his whole existence. H ow can he ever escape
this Nature?8
T h e Sources of Escapism. It is really to be wondered at how man could
ever conceive this idea of escaping from Nature. Separation from Nature
being utterly impossible, how could man ever dream of such a thing?
Whence this monstrous dream? W hence does it come if not from theology,
the science of Non-Being, and later from metaphysics, which is the impos
sible reconciliation of Non-Existence with reality?4
W e must distinguish well between natural laws and authoritarian, arbi
trary, political, religious, criminal, and civil laws which the privileged

263
 264 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
classes have established in the course of history, always in the interest of
exploitation o f the labor of the toiling masseslaws which, under the
pretense of a fictitious morality were ever the source of the deepest im
morality: consequently, involuntary and inescapable obedience to all laws
which, independently of human will, constitute the very life of Nature
and society; and at the same time independence as complete as possible for
everyone in relation to all pretensions to command, coming from any
human will whatever, individual as well as collective, and tending to assert
themselves not b y way o f natural influence, but b y imposing their law,
their despotism.
Freedom Does Not Imply Foregoing Any Exertion of Influence. The
freedom of every man is the result produced ever anew by a multitude of
physical, mental, and moral influences to which he is subjected b y the
environment in which he was bom, and in which he lives and dies. T o
wish to escape from this influence in the name of some transcendental,
divine freedom, self-sufficient and absolutely egoistical, is to aim at non
existence; to forego influencing others means to forego social action, or
even giving expression to ones thoughts and feelingswhich again is to
tend toward non-existence. This notorious independence, so greatly ex
tolled b y the idealists and metaphysicians, and individual freedom conceived
in this sense, are just mere nothingness.
The worse it is for those who are ignorant o f the natural and social
law of human solidarity to the extent of imagining that the absolute mutual
independence of individuals or the masses is possible or desirable. T o will
that is to will the very annihilation of society, for all social life is simply
this incessant mutual dependence o f individuals and masses. AH individuals,
even the strongest and the most intelligent of them, are, at every instant o f
their lives, at once producers and the product of the will and action of
the masses.7
In Nature as in human society, which in itself is nothing but Nature,
everything that lives does so only under the supreme condition o f inter
vening in the most positive manner in the life o f othersintervening in as
powerful a manner as the particular nature o f a given individual permits it
to do so. T o do away with this reciprocal influence would spell death in
the full sense o f the word. And when we demand liberty for the masses,
we do not pretend to have abolished any of the natural influences exerted
upon the masses b y any individual or group of individuals. W hat we want
is the abolition o f fictitious, privileged, legal, and official influences.
Liberty in Conformity with Natural Laws. Mans freedom consists
solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recog
nized them as such, and not because they have been imposed upon him
by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual.
As against natural laws there is only one kind o f liberty possible for
manand that is to recognize and apply them on an ever-extending scale in
265 Freedom and Equality
conformity with the goal of emancipation, or humanization-individual or
collectivewhich he pursues. These laws, once recognized, exercise an
authority which has never been disputed by the great mass of mankind.
One must, for instance, be a madman or a theologian, or at least a meta
physician, a jurist, or a bourgeois economist to revolt against the law
according to which twice tw o makes four. One must have faith to imagine
that one will not bum in fire or that he will not drown in water unless he
has recourse to some subterfuge, which, in its turn, is founded on some
other natural law. But these revolts, or rather these attempts at or wild
fancies of impossible revolts, constitute only very rare exceptions; for in
general it may be said that the mass o f mankind, in their daily lives, let
themselves be governed, in an almost absolute fashion, b y common sense,
that is, b y the sum of generally recognized natural laws.
Rational lib erty. True, man, with the aid o f knowledge and the
thoughtful application of the laws of Nature, gradually emancipates him
self, but he achieves this emancipation not in regard to the universal yoke,
which is borne b y all living beings, himself included, and b y all existing
things that are produced and that vanish in this world. Man frees himself
only from the brutal pressure of his external material and social world,
including that of all the things and people surrounding him. He dominates
things through science and b y work; and as to the arbitrary yoke o f men,
he throws it off through revolutions.
Such then is the only rational meaning of the word liberty, it is the
domination over external things, based upon the respectful observance o f
the laws of Nature; it is independence from the pretentious claims and
despotic acts o f men; it is science, work, political rebellion, and, finally,
it is the organization, at once planned and free, of a social environment, in
conformity with the natural laws inherent in every human society. The
first and last condition o f this liberty remains then the most absolute sub
mission to the omnipotence of Nature, our mother, and the observance, the
most rigorous application of her laws.11
W ide Diffusion of Knowledge W ill Lead to Full Freedom. The great
misfortune is that a large number o f natural laws, already established as
such b y science, remain unknown to the masses, thanks to the solicitous
care of the tutelary governments that exist, as we know, only for the good
of the people. There also is another difficulty: namely, that the greater
number o f the natural laws inherent in the development o f human society,
which are quite as necessary, invariable, and inevitable, as the laws which
govern the physical world, have not been duly recognized and established
by science itself.12
Once they have been recognized, first b y science and then by means of
an extensive system o f popular education and instruction, once they have
become part and parcel o f the general consciousnessthe question o f lib
erty will be completely solved. The most recalcitrant authorities must
 2 66 TH E PO LIT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
admit that there will then be no need of political organization, administra
tion, or legislation, three things which, whether emanating from the will
o f the sovereign or from that of a parliament elected on the basis of uni
versal suffrage, and even if they should conform to the system o f natural
lawswhich has never happened yet and never will happenare always
equally baneful and hostile to the liberty of the people because they
impose upon the latter a system of external and therefore despotic laws.18
Freedom Is Valid Only W hen Shared by Everyone. The materialist,
realist, and collectivist definition of liberty is altogether opposed to that
o f the idealists. The materialist definition runs like this: Man becomes man
and arrives at awareness as well as realization o f his humanity only in
society and only through the collective action of the whole society. He
frees himself from the yoke o f external Nature only b y collective and
social labor, which alone is capable o f transforming the surface o f the
earth into an abode favorable to the development o f humanity. And with
out this material emancipation there can be no intellectual or moral emanci
pation for anyone.
Man cannot free himself from the yoke o f his own nature, that is, he
can subordinate his instincts and his bodily movements to the direction
o f his ever-developing mind only with the aid o f education and upbringing.
Both, however, are pre-eminently and exclusively social phenomena. For
outside of society man would always remain a wild beast or a saint,
which is about the same. Finally, an isolated man cannot have awareness
of his liberty. T o be free signifies that man shall be recognized and treated
as such b y another man, b y all men who surround him. Liberty then is
not a fact springing from isolation but from reciprocal action, a fact not
of exclusion, but, on the contrary, of social interactionfor the freedom of
every individual is simply the reflection o f his humanity or his human
right in the consciousness o f all free men, his brothers, his equals.14
I can call myself and feel myself a free man only in the presence of and
in relation to other men. In the presence of an animal of inferior species, I
am neither free nor am I a man, for that animal is incapable o f conceiving,
and consequently incapable of recognizing m y humanity. I myself am
human and free only inasmuch as I recognize the freedom and humanity
o f all people surrounding me. It is only when I respect their human char
acter that I respect m y own humanity.
A cannibal who eats his captives, treating them as savage animals, is
not a man but a beast. The master o f slaves is not a man but a master. In
ignoring the humanity o f his slaves, he ignores his own humanity. Every
ancient society furnishes good proofs thereof: the Greeks, the Romans,
did not feel free as men, they did not consider themselves as such from
the point o f view of human right. T h ey believed themselves privileged as
Greeks, as Romans, only in their own fatherland, and only so long as the
latter remained unconquered and on the contrary conquering other coun-
 267 Freedom and Equality
tries because of the special protection o f their national gods. And they did
not wonder and did not hold it their right or duty to revolt when, having
been vanquished, they themselves fell into slavery.1*
Christian Freedom. It was the great merit of Christianity that it pro
claimed the humanity o f all human beings, including that of women, and
the equality o f all men before God. Y et how was it proclaimed? In the
sky, in the future life, but not for the existing real life upon earth. Besides,
this equality to come constitutes a falsehood because, as we know, the
number of the elect is greatly restricted. O n this point all the theologians
of the various Christian sects are in full agreement. Accordingly, the so-
called Christian equality entails the most flagrant privilege on the part o f
the several thousands elected by Divine Grace over the millions o f the
damned. For that matter, the equality o f all before God, even if it were
all-inclusive to embrace everyone, would only be equality o f nothingness,
and equal slavery of all before a supreme master.1*
And is not the basis of the Christian cult and the first condition of
salvation the renunciation of human dignity and the cultivation o f con
tempt for this dignity in the presence of Divine Grandeur? A Christian
then is not a man, in the sense that he lacks the consciousness of his
humanity, and because, not respecting human dignity in himself, he cannot
respect it in others; and not respecting it in others, he cannot respect it in
himself. A Christian can be a prophet, a saint, a priest, a king, a general, a
minister, a State functionary, a representative o f some authority, a gen
darme, an executioner, a nobleman, an exploiting bourgeois, an enthralled
proletarian, an oppressor or one of the oppressed, a torturer or one o f the
tortured, an employer or a hired man, but he has no right to call himself
man, for one becomes a man only when he respects and loves the humanity
and liberty of everyone else and when his own freedom and his humanity
are respected, loved, stimulated, and created by all others.17
Freedom of Individual Increased and Not lim ited by Freedom of A ll.
I am free only when all human beings surrounding memen and women
alikeare equally free. The freedom of others, far from limiting or
negating my liberty, is on the contrary its necessary condition and con
firmation. I become free in the true sense only b y virtue o f the liberty of
others, so much so that the greater the number of free people surrounding
me and the deeper and greater and more extensive their liberty, the deeper
and larger becomes m y liberty.
On the contrary, it is the slavery of men that sets up a barrier to m y
liberty, or (which practically amounts to the same) it is their bestiality
which constitutes a negation of m y humanity because, I repeat again, I
can call myself a truly free person only when m y freedom or, (which is
the same) my human dignity, m y human right, the essence of which is to
obey no one and to follow only the guidance o f m y own ideaswhen this
freedom, reflected b y the equally free consciousness of all men, comes
 268 TH E PO L IT IC A L PH ILO SO PH Y OF B A K U N IN
back to me confirmed by everybodys assent. M y personal freedom, thus
confirmed b y the freedom o f everyone else, extends to infinity.
T h e Constituent Elements of Freedom. W e can see then that free
dom, as understood b y materialists, is something very positive, very
complex, and above all eminently social, since it can be realized only b y
society and only under conditions of strict equality and solidarity o f each
person with all his fellows. One can distinguish in it three phases of devel
opment, three elements, the first of which is highly positive and social. It
is the full development and the full enjoyment by everyone of all the
faculties and human powers through the means o f education, scientific
upbringing, and material prosperity, and all that can be given to everyone
only b y collective labor, and b y the material and mental, muscular, and
nervous labor of society as a whole.18
Rebellion the Second Element of Liberty. The second element or
phase o f liberty is negative in character. It is the element of revolt on the
part of the human individual against all divine and human authority, col
lective and individual. It is first of all a revolt against the tyranny of the
supreme phantom of theology, against God. . . .
. . . Following that and coming as a consequence of the revolt against
God, there is the revolt against the tyranny of man, against authority,
individual as well as collective, represented and legalized b y the State.18
T h e Implication of the Theory of the Pre-Social Existence of Indi
vidual Freedom. But if the metaphysicians affirm that men, especially
those who believe in the immortality of the soul, stand outside of the society
of free beings, w e inevitably arrive at the conclusion that men can unite in
a society only at the cost of their own liberty, their natural independence,
and b y sacrificing first their personal and their local interests. Such self-
renunciation and self-sacrifice are thus all the more imperative the more
numerous society is in point of membership and the greater the com
plexity o f its organization. In this sense the State is the expression of all
the individual sacrifices. Given this abstract and at the same time violent
origin, the State has to restrict liberty to an ever greater extent, doing it in
the name of a falsehood called the good of the people, which in reality
represents exclusively the interests of the dominant class. Thus the State
appears as an inevitable negation and annihilation of all liberty, of all
individual and collective interests.20
Freedom the Ultimate Aim of Human Development. But w e who
believe neither in God nor in the immortality of the soul, nor in the
freedom of will, we maintain that liberty should be understood in its
larger connotation as the goal o f the historic progress of humanity. B y a
strange, although logical contrast, our adversaries, the idealists of theology
and metaphysics, take the principle of liberty as the foundation and the
starting point of their theories, to deduce from it the indispensability of
slavery for all men. W e, materialists in theory, aim in practice to create
 269 Freedom and Equality
and consolidate a rational and noble idealism. Our enemies, the divine and
transcendental idealists, sink into a practical bloody, and vile materialism,
impelled b y the same logic according to which every development is the
negation of the basic principle.
W e are convinced that all the wealth and all the intellectual, moral,
and material development o f man, as well as the degree of independence
he already has attainedthat all this is the product o f life in society. Outside
of society, man would not only fail to be free; he would not even grow
to the stature of a true man, that is, a being aware of himself and who
feels and has the power o f speech. It was only the intercourse o f minds and
collective labor that forced man out of the stage of being a savage and a
brute, which constituted his original nature, or the starting point o f his
ultimate development.21
Freedom and Socialism Are Mutually Complementary. The serious
realization of liberty, justice, and peace will be impossible so long as the
vast majority of the population remains dispossessed in point of elementary
needs, so long as it is deprived of education and is condemned to political
and social insignificance and slaveryin fact if not by lawby the poverty
as well as the necessity o f working without rest or leisure, producing all
the wealth, upon which the world now prides itself, and receiving in return
only such a small part thereof that it hardly suffices to assure [the worker s]
bread for the next day;. . . we are convinced that freedom without Social
ism is privilege and injustice, and that Socialism without freedom is slavery
and brutality,22
It is characteristic o f privilege and o f every privileged position to kill
the minds and hearts o f men. The privileged man, whether politically or
economically, is a mentally and morally depraved man. That is a social law
which admits o f no exception and which holds good in relation to whole
nations as well as to classes, groups, and individuals. It is the law of equality,
the supreme condition of freedom and humanity.2
Socialism and Equality. Much as one may resort to all kinds of sub
terfuges, much as one may try to obscure the issue, and to falsify social
science for the benefit of bourgeois exploitation, all sensible people who
have no interest in deceiving themselves, now understand that so long as a
certain number o f people possessing economic privileges have the means
to lead a life which is beyond the reach of the workers; that so long as a
more or less considerable number inherit, in various proportions, capital
and land which is not the product of their own labor, while on the other
hand the vast majority of workers do not inherit anything at all; so long as
land rent and interest on capital enable those privileged people to live
without workingso long as such a state of things exists, equality is in
conceivable.
Even assuming that everyone in society workswhether b y compulsion
or b y free choicebut that one class in society, thanks to its economic
 270 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
situation and enjoying as a result thereof special political and social priv
ileges, can devote itself exclusively to mental work, while the vast majority
of people struggle hard for a bare living; in a word, so long as individuals
on coming into life do not find in society the same means of livelihood, the
same education, upbringing, work, and enjoyment-political, economic,
and social equality will be impossible.
It was in the name o f equality that the bourgeoisie overthrew and
massacred the nobility. And it is in the name o f equality that we now
demand either the violent death or the voluntary suicide of the bourgeoisie,
only with this differencethat being less bloodthirsty than the bour
geoisie of the revolutionary period, we do not want the death of men but
the abolition of positions and things. If the bourgeoisie resigns itself to
the inevitable changes, not a hair on its head will be touched. But so much
the worse for it, if, forgetting prudence and sacrificing its individual
interests to the collective interests of its class, a class doomed to extinction,
it places itself athwart the course of the historic justice o f the people, in
order to save a position which will soon become utterly untenable.24
T h e Nature of True Freedom* I am a fanatical lover of freedom,
viewing it as the only milieu in the midst of which the intelligence, dignity,
and happiness of men can grow; but not of that formal liberty, vouchsafed,
measured, and regulated by the State, which is an eternal falsehood and
which in reality represents only the privilege o f the select few based upon
the slavery o f the rest; and not of that individualist, egoistic, jejune, and
fictitious liberty proclaimed b y Jean Jacques Rousseau as well as b y all the
other schools o f bourgeois liberalism, which regard the so-called public
right represented b y the State as being the limit o f the right of everyone,
which necessarily and always results in the whittling down of the right
of everyone to the zero point.
N o, I have in mind the only liberty worthy o f that name, liberty
consisting in the full development of all the material, intellectual, and
moral powers latent in every man; a liberty which does not recognize
any other restrictions but those which are traced by the laws o f our own
nature, which, properly speaking, is tantamount to saying that there are no
restrictions at all, since these laws are not imposed upon us by some out
side legislator standing above us or alongside us. Those laws are imminent,
inherent in us; they constitute the very basis o f our being, material as well
as intellectual and moral; and instead of finding in them a limit to our
liberty we should regard them as its real conditions and as its effective
reason.25
I have in mind this liberty of everyone which, far from finding itself
checked b y the freedom of others, is, on the contrary, confirmed by it and
extended to infinity. And I have in mind the freedom of every individual
unlimited by the freedom o f all, freedom in solidarity, freedom in equality,
freedom triumphing over brute force and the principle of authority (which
271 Freedom and Equality
was ever the ideal expression of this force); a freedom which, having over
thrown all the heavenly and earthly idols, will have founded and organ
ized a new world, the world o f human solidarity, upon the ruins o f all the
churches and states.36
I am a convinced partisan of economic and social equality because I
know that outside o f this equality, freedom, justice, human dignity,
morality, and the well-being of individuals as well as the flourishing o f
nations, are a Ue.3T
W e already have said that by freedom we understand on one hand the
development, as complete as possible, of all the natural faculties of every
individual, and on the other hand his independence not in relation to
natural and social laws, but in relation to all laws imposed by other human
wills, whether collective or isolated.38
W e understand b y freedom, from the positive point o f view, the
development, as complete as possible, of all faculties which man has
within himself, and, from the negative point o f view, the independence of
the will o f everyone from the will of others.2
W e are convincedand modem history fully confirms our conviction
that so long as humanity is divided into an exploiting minority and an
exploited majority, freedom is impossible, becoming instead a falsehood.
If you want freedom for all, you must strive together with us to attain
universal equality.30
How Can Freedom and Equality Be Assured? Do you want to make
it impossible for anyone to oppress his fellow-man? Then make sure that
no one shall possess power. Do you want men to respect the liberty, rights,
and personality of their fellows? Make sure that they shall be compelled
to respect them, forced not by the will nor by the oppressive action o f
other men, and not by the repression of the State and its laws, necessarily
represented and applied by men, which in turn makes slaves o f them, but
by the very organization of social environmentan organization so
constituted that b y affording everyone the fullest enjoyment of his liberty,
it does not permit anyone to rise above others nor dominate them in any
way but through the natural influence of the intellectual and moral
qualities which he possesses, without this influence ever being imposed as
a right and without leaning upon any political institution whatever? 1

c h a p t e r 2 Federalism: R eal and Sham

Is Municipal Self-Government a Sufficient Counter-Balance for a Cen
tralized State? The illustrious Italian patriot Joseph Mazzini . . . maintains
that autonomy of the communes is quite sufficient to counterbalance the
 272 TH E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
omnipotence of a solidily built republic. But he is mistaken about that: no
isolated commune would be capable o f resisting such a formidable cen
tralization; it would be crushed b y it. In order not to succumb in this
struggle, each commune will have to combine with neighboring communes
in a federation with a view to common defense; that is, it will have to form
together with them an autonomous province. Besides, if the provinces are
not autonomous, they will have to be governed b y State-appointed func
tionaries. There is no midway between a rigorously consistent federalism
and a bureaucratic regime. . . . In 1793, under the regime o f terror, the
autonomy of communes was recognized, but that did not prevent their
being crushed b y the revolutionary despotism of the Convention or rather
of the Commune of Paris, of which Napoleon was the heir.1
Organic Social Unity Versus State Unity. Mazzini and all the advo
cates of unity place themselves in a contradictory position when on one
hand they tell you of the deep, intimate, brotherly feeling existing among
this group of twenty-five millions of Italians, united by language, traditions,
morals, faith, and common aspirations, while on the other hand they want
to maintainnay, to augmentthe power of the State, which, they say, is
necessary for the preservation of that unity. But if the Italians are so
effectively and indissolubly linked b y ties of solidarity, it would be a luxury
and even sheer nonsense to force them into a union. If, on the contrary,
you believe it necessary to force them to unite, it simply shows that you
are convinced that the natural bonds are not so strong, and that you lie to
them, that you wish to mislead them when you talk of union.
A social union, the real outcome o f a combination of traditions, habits,
customs, ideas, present interests, and common aspirations, is a living, fertile,
real unity. The political unity of the State is a fiction, an abstraction of
unity; and not only does it conceal discord, but it artificially produces such
discord where, without this intervention b y the State, a living unity would
not fail to spring up.2
Socialism Must Be Federalist: in Character. That is w hy Socialism
is federalist: in character and w hy the International as a whole enthusias
tically hailed the program of the Paris Commune.* On the other hand, the
Commune proclaimed explicitly in its manifestoes that what it wanted was
not the dissolution of the national unity of France but its resurrection, its
consolidation, its revival, and real and full liberty for the people. It wanted
the unity of the nation, of the people, of French society, but not the unity
of the State.
Medieval and Modem Communes. Mazzini, in his hatred of the Paris
Commune, has gone to the extreme o f sheer foolishness. H e maintains that
the system proclaimed by the last revolution in Paris would lead us back

* This refers to the Commune of 1871, and is not to be confused with the Commune of
1793, cited earlier in this chapter.
273 Federalism Real and Sham
to the medieval ages, that is, to the breaking up of the civilized world
into a number of small centers, foreign to and ignoring one another. He
does not understand, poor fellow, that between the commune of the
Middle Ages and the modem commune there is the vast difference which
the history of the last five centuries wrought not just in books but in the
morals, aspirations, ideas, interests, and needs o f the population. The
Italian communes were, at the beginning of their history, really isolated
centers o f social and political life, independent o f one another, lacking any
solidarity, and forced into a certain kind of self-sufficiency.
H ow different that was from what is in existence today! The material,
intellectual, and moral interests created among all the members o f the
same nation-nay, even o f different nationsa social unity of so powerful
and real a nature that whatever is being done now b y the States to paralyze
and destroy such unity is o f no avail. That unity resists everything and it
will survive the States.
T h e Living Unity of the Future. W hen the States have disappeared,
a living, fertile, beneficent unity of regions as well as of nationsfirst the
international unity of the civilized world and then the unity of all o f the
peoples of the earth, by w ay o f a free federation and organization from
below upwardwill unfold itself in all its majesty, not divine but human.4
The patriotic movement o f the Italian youth under the direction o f
Garibaldi and Mazzini was legitimate, useful, and glorious; not because
it created political unity, the unified Italian Stateon the contrary, that
was its mistake, for it could not create that unity without sacrificing the
liberty and prosperity o f the peoplebut because it destroyed the various
political centers of domination, the different States which violently and
artificially obstructed the social unification o f the Italian people.
That glorious work having been accomplished, the youth o f Italy is
called upon to perform an even more glorious task. That is to aid the
Italian people in destroying the unitary State which it founded with its
own hands. It [the youth o f Italy] should oppose to the unitary banner of
Mazzini the federal banner o f the Italian nation, o f the Italian people.
Real and Sham Federalism. One has to distinguish between fed
eralism and federalism.
There exists in Italy the tradition of a regional federalism, which by
now has become a political and historical falsehood. Let us say once for all,
the past will never come back; it would be a great misfortune if it were
revived. Regional federalism could be only an institution of the merging
aristocratic and plutocratic classes (comortma), for, in relation to the
communes and workers associationsindustrial and agriculturalit would
still be a political organization built from the top downward. A truly
popular organization begins, on the contrary, from below, from the
association, from the commune. Thus, starting out with the organization
of the lowest nucleus and proceeding upward, federalism becomes a
 274 T H E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

political institution of Socialism, the free and spontaneous organization of

popular life.
In conformity with sentiment unanimously expressed at the first Con
gress of the League for Peace and Freedom [held in Geneva, Switzerland,
in September, 18673, we now declare:
T h e Principle of Federalism. 1. There is only one w ay of insuring
the triumph of freedom, justice, and peace in the international relations o f
Europe, o f rendering impossible any civil war among peoples comprising
the European family, and that is: by building up a United States of Europe.
2. The United States o f Europe can never be formed out of the present
European States, in view o f the monstrous inequality existing among their
respective forces.
3. The example of the defunct German Confederation proved in a
peremptory manner that a confederation of monarchies is a mockery, that
it is powerless to guarantee peace and liberty to the populations.
4. N o centralized, bureaucratic, military State, even if it calls itself
republican, can seriously and sincerely enter into an international confed
eration. B y its constitution, which will always be a negation of freedom
within the State, either open or masked, it will necessarily be a permanent
war declaration, a standing menace to the existence o f the neighboring
countries. Based essentially upon a preceding act o f violence, upon conquest,
or what in private life is called burglaryan act blessed by the Church,
consecrated b y time, and therefore transformed into a historic right, and
resting upon this divine consecration of a triumphant violence as an
exclusive and supreme rightevery centralized State thereby poses itself
as an absolute negation o f the rights of all other States, recognizing them
in the treaties it concludes only in view of some political interest or owing
to its impotence.
5. A ll the adherents of the League should direct their efforts to rebuild
their respective countries, in order to replace the old organization, founded
from above downward upon violence and the principle o f authority, b y a
new organization having no other foundation but the interests, needs, and
natural affinities o f the population, and admitting no other principle but
the free federation of individuals into communes, o f communes into
provinces, of provinces into nations, and finally, o f nations into the United
States of Europe and then into the United States of the World.
6. Consequently, the absolute abandonment of all that is called the
historic rights of the States; all questions relating to natural, political,
strategic, and commercial boundaries should henceforth be considered as
belonging to ancient history and be vigorously rejected b y League
adherents.7
7. Recognition o f the absolute right o f every nation, small or large,
o f every people, weak or strong, and o f every province, of every com
mune, to a complete autonomy, provided the internal constitution o f any
275 Federalism Real and Sham
such unit is not in the nature o f a menace to the autonomy and freedom o f
its neighbors.
8. Because a certain country constitutes a part of some State, even if
it joined that State of its own free will, it does not follow that it is under
obligation to remain forever attached to that State. N o perpetual obligation
can be admitted b y human justice, the only justice which we recognize as
having authority with us, and we will never recognize any duties that are
not founded upon freedom. The right of free reunion, as well as the right
of secession, is the first and most important of all political rights; lacking
that right, a confederation would simply be disguised centralization. . . .8
12. The League recognizes nationality as a natural fact, having the
incontestable right to exist and to develop freely, but it does not recognize
it as a principle-tor every principle should possess the character o f univer
sality, whereas nationality, on the contrary, is an exclusive and isolated
fact. The so-called principle of nationalities, such as has been posed in our
day b y the governments o f France, Russia, and Prussia, and even b y many
German, Polish, Italian, and Hungarian patriots, is only a derivative of
reaction and is opposed to the spirit of revolution. A highly aristocratic
principle at heart, going so far as to despise the local dialects of the
illiterate population, implicitly denying the liberty o f the provinces and
the real autonomy o f the communes, and lacking the support of the masses
whose real interests it sacrifices for the sake o f the so-called public good,
this principle expresses only the pretended historic rights and ambitions of
the States. Thus the right of nationality can be considered only as the
natural result o f the supreme principle of liberty, ceasing to be a right from
the moment it is posed against or even outside of liberty.
13. Unity is the goal toward which humanity irresistibly tends. But
it becomes fatal and destructive o f the intelligence, dignity, and prosperity
of individuals and peoples whenever it is formed b y excluding liberty,
whether b y violence or b y the authority of any theological, metaphysical,
political, or even economic ideas. . . . The League can recognize only one
kind o f unity: that which is freely constituted b y the federation o f the
autonomous parties into a single whole, so that the latter, no longer being
the negation of rights and particular interests, and ceasing to be the ceme-
rery wherein all the local prosperities are interred, will become, on the
contrary, the source and the confirmation o f all these autonomies and all
these prosperities. The League shall then vigorously attack every religious,
political, economic, and social organization which is not permeated b y this
great principle o f liberty. W ithout that principle there can be neither
enlightenment, nor prosperity, nor justice, nor humanity.10
Such then are the developments and the necessary consequences of the
great principle of federalism. Such are the necessary conditions of peace
and freedom. The necessary conditions, yesbut the only ones? W e do
not think so.11
 276 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
. . . The abolition o f every political State, the transformation of the
political federation into an economic, national, and international federation.
It is toward this aim that Europe as a whole is now marching.12
T h e Federalism of the Southern States Was Based Upon a Hideous
Social Reality. The Southern States, in the great republican confederation
of North America, were, from the time of the proclamation of independ
ence by the American republic, pre-eminently democratic and federalist
States, going to the length of clamoring for secession. And still they have,
of late, drawn upon themselves the condemnation o f all partisans of liberty
and humanity, and b y their iniquitous and sacrilegious war against the
republican States o f the North, they nearly succeeded in overthrowing and
destroying the finest political organization that mankind has ever known.
W hat is the main cause behind this strange fact? Is it a political cause?
No, the cause is wholly social in character. The internal political organi
zation of the Southern States was in many respects more perfect, more
completely in harmony with the ideal o f liberty than the political organiza-
tion of the Northern States. But this magnificent political structure had
its dark side, like the republics of antiquity: the freedom of citizens was
founded upon the forced labor of slaves.1*
T h e Stirrings of Equality Produced by the French Revolution. From
the time when the Revolution brought down to the masses its Gospel
not the mystic but the rational, not the heavenly but the earthly, not the
divine but the human Gospel, the Gospel of the Rights o f Manand after
it proclaimed that all men are equal, and that all men are entitled to
liberty and equalitythe masses of . . . all the civilized world, awakening
gradually from the sleep which had kept them in bondage ever since Chris
tianity drugged them with its opium, began to ask themselves whether they
too had the right to equality, freedom, and humanity.
Socialismthe Explicit Expression of the Hopes Raised by the French
Revolution. A s soon as this question was posed, the people, guided b y
their admirable sound sense as well as b y their instincts, realized that the
first condition o f their real emancipation, or of their humanization, must
be a radical change in their economic situation. The question o f daily
bread was, justly, the first question to them, for, as Aristotle noted, man,
in order to think, to feel himself free, and to become a man, must be freed
from the preoccupations of the material life. For that matter, the bourgeois,
who are so vociferous in their outcries against the materialism of the people
and who preach to the latter the abstinences o f idealism, know it very
well, for they themselves preach it b y word and not by example.
The second question arising for the people is that o f leisure after work,
an indispensable condition for humanity; but bread and leisure can never
be obtained apart from a radical transformation o f society, and that
explains w hy the Revolution, driven on b y the implications o f its own
principle, gave birth to Socialism
 277 State Socialism Theories W eighed

c h a p t e r 3 State Socialism
Theories Weighed

Babeuf: the l in k Between the French Revolution and Socialism.

The French Revolution having proclaimed the right and the duty of
every human individual to become a mem, arrived in its ultimate conclu
sions at Babeuvism, Babeuf, one of the last energetic and pure-hearted
citizens whom the Revolution created and then killed off in such a great
number, and who had the good fortune to count among his friends such
men as Buonarotti, combined in a singular conception the political tradi
tion o f antiquity with the altogether modem ideas o f a social revolution.
Seeing that the Revolution was failing for lack of a radical change,
which, in all probability, was then impossible in view o f the economic
structure of that period (and faithful, on the other hand, to the spirit of
the Revolution, which ended b y substituting the omnipotent action of
the State for all individual initiative), he had conceived a political and
social system, according to which the Republicthe expression of the
collective will of the citizensafter having confiscated all individual
property, was to administer it in the interest of all, allotting to everyone
in equal shares: education, instruction, the means of existence, and pleasures,
and compelling all, without exception, in the measure of each ones
capacity, to do physical or mental labor.
Babeufs conspiracy failed, and he was guillotined with some of his
friends. But his ideal of a Socialist republic did not die with him. Taken
up by his friend, Buonarotti, the greatest conspirator of this century, that
idea was transmitted by the latter as a sacred trust to new generations, and,
owing to the secret societies which he founded in Belgium and France,
Communist ideas blossomed forth in the popular imagination. From 1830
to 1848 they found capable interpreters in the persons of Cabet and Louis
Blanc, who definitively established revolutionary Socialism.1
Doctrinaire Socialism. Another Socialist current, issuing from the
same revolutionary source, and tending toward the same goal, but by
altogether different means, a current which we should gladly call doc
trinaire Socialism, was founded b y two eminent men: Saint-Simon and
Fourier. Saint-Simonism was expounded, developed, transformed, and
established as a quasi-practical system, as a Church, b y Father Enfantin,
together with many of his friends, most of whom [later] became financiers
and statesmen, singularly devoted to the empire. Fourierism found its
exponent in Dmocratie Pacifique [Peaceful Democracy], edited until
December 2, 1852, b y V ictor Considrant.2
 278 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
T h e Historic R ole o Saint-Simonism and Fourierism. T h e merits o f
those two systems, differing from each other in many respects, consist
mainly in the profound, scientific, and severe criticism of the present
system, the monstrous contradictions o f which they boldly uncovered,
and in the important fact that they attacked and shook Christianity in the
name of rehabilitation of matter and human passions, calumniated and at
the same time so widely practiced by Christian priests.
The Saint-Simonians wanted to replace Christianity with a new
religion, based upon the mystic cult of the flesh, with a new hierarchy o f
priests, new exploiters of the multitude b y the privilege o f genius, ability,
and talent. The Fourierists, democrats to a much greater extentand one
might say, more sincerely democraticconceived their phalansteries as
being governed and administered b y chiefs elected through universal suf
frage, and in which, they believed, each would find the kind of work and
kind o f place most suitable to his natural passions. The fallacies o f the
Saint-Simonians are too evident to be discussed here.
The two-fold error of the Fourierists consisted, first, in believing sin
cerely that through the power of persuasion and peaceful propaganda they
would be able to touch the hearts o f the rich to such an extent that the
latter would come themselves and lay down the surpluses o f their riches
at the doors of their phalansteries; and their second error was that they
imagined it would be possible to construct theoretically, a priori, a social
paradise in which humanity would settle down forever. T h ey did not
understand that all we can do now is to indicate the great principles of
the development o f humanity, and that w e should leave it to . . . future
generations to carry those principles into practice.
In general, regimentation was the common passion of all the Socialists,
except one, prior to 1848. Cabet, Louis Blanc, the Fourierists, the Saint-
Simoniansall these were possessed b y the passion to indoctrinate and to
organize the future; all of them were authoritarians to a greater or lesser
extent.
Proudhon. But then came Proudhon: the son o f a peasant, and, b y
his works and instinct, a hundred times more revolutionary than all the
doctrinaire and bourgeois Socialists, he equipped himself with a critical
point o f view, as ruthless as it was profound and penetrating, in order to
destroy all their systems. Opposing liberty to authority, he boldly pro
claimed himself an Anarchist by w ay of setting forth his ideas in con
tradistinction to those of the State Socialists, and, in the face o f their
deism or pantheism, he had the courage simply to declare himself an
atheist, or rather a positivist, like Auguste Comte.8
Proudhons Socialism,based upon individual and collective freedom
and upon the spontaneous actions of free associations, and obeying no
other laws but the general laws of the social economy, those that already
had been discovered or would be discovered in the future; a Socialism
 279 St ore Socialism Theories W eighed
functioning outside of any governmental regulation and all State protec
tion, and subordinating politics to the economic, intellectual, and moral
interests of societythat kind o f Socialism was bound in the course of
time to arrive at Federalism,4
Such was the state of social science prior to 1848. The polemics
voiced through newspapers, leaflets, and Socialist pamphlets carried a
multitude of new ideas into the midst o f the working class; the latter
became permeated with those ideas toward 1848, and when the revolution
broke out in that year, Socialism emerged as a powerful force.
T h e June Defeat of the Workers of Paris Was the Defeat of State
Socialism, But Not of Socialism in General. It was not Socialism in gen
eral that succumbed in June, 1848, but only State Socialism, the authori
tarian, regimenting Socialism which hoped and believed that the State
would be able to satisfy the needs and the legitimate aspirations o f the
working class, and that, armed with full and unlimited power, it would be
desirous and capable of inaugurating a new social order. Thus it was not
Socialism that died in the month of June; on the contrary, it was the
State that went bankrupt. Proclaiming itself incapable of paying the debt
which it had contracted toward Socialism, the State attempted to kill
the latter to rid itself in this easy manner o f the debt it had incurred.
T h e State did not succeed in destroying Socialism, but it did kill the
faith in the State entertained by Socialism. B y this very act the State
annihilated the theories of authoritarian or doctrinaire Socialism, some o f
which, like Cabets lcaria and Louis Blancs The Organization of Labory
counseled the people to repose full confidence in the State, while others
demonstrated their absurdity b y a number of ridiculous experiments.
Even Proudhouns bank, which might have prospered under more favor
able circumstances, succumbed under the crushing weight o f the universal
hostility o f the bourgeois.
W hy Socialism Lost Out in the Revolution of 1848 . Socialism lost
this first battle for a very simple reason: It was full of instinctive drives
and negative ideas, it wais a thousand times right when it fought
against privilege. But it still lacked positive and practical ideas necessary
to build a new system, a system o f popular justice, upon the ruins o f the
bourgeois system. The workers who fought in June for the emancipation
of the people, were united b y instinct and not b y ideasthe ideas which
they did have formed a veritable tower of Babel, a chaos from which
nothing could come out. Such was the principal cause o f their defeat.
Should one on that account doubt the present and future power of
Socialism? Christianity, which set for itself the task o f founding the King
dom o f Justice in Heaven, needed several centuries to conquer Europe,
is it to be wondered then that Socialism, which set for itself a more dif
ficult taskthe founding o f the Kingdom of Justice upon the earthhas
not triumphed in a few years?*
 280 TH E P O L IT IC A L PH ILO SO PH Y OF B A K U N IN
T h e Ruined Petty Bourgeois W ill Be Swept into the Social Struggle
Under the Leadership of the Proletariat. . . . A t the present time the
petty bourgeoisie, small industry, and petty trade begin to suffer almost
as much as the working masses, and, if things continue moving in the same
direction and at the same rate, this respectable bourgeois majority will,
in all probability, soon merge with the proletariat. Large-scale commerce,
big industry, and above all, big and dishonest speculation, crush the petty
bourgeoisie, devour, and push it toward the abyss. Thus the position of
the petty bourgeoisie becomes more and more revolutionary, and its ideas,
which have been reactionary until now, must take an opposite direction.
The most intelligent of its members begin to understand that no other
salvation remains for the honest bourgeoisie but to ally themselves with
the peopleand that the petty bourgeoisie is interested in the social
problem no less than and in the same maimer as the people.7
This progressive change in the climate o f opinion among the petty
bourgeoisie in Europe is a fact as consoling as it is indisputable. W e
should not, however, entertain any illusions on that score: the initiative
in this new development will belong to the people and not to the petty
bourgeoisie; in the West, to the factory and city workers; and in Russia,
Poland, and most of the Slavic countries, to the peasants. The petty bour
geoisie has become too cowardly, too timid, too skeptical, to take any
initiative whatever; it lets itself be carried away, but it does not show
initiative in this respect, for it is poverty-stricken in regard to ideas to
the same extent that it lacks faith and social passion. The passion which
sweeps away all obstacles and creates new worlds can be found now only
among the people. Therefore it is with the people that the initiative o f this
new movement will belong in the future.8
T h e Party o f Reaction and the Party of Social Revolution. In our
time, everywherein America, and throughout Europe, as well as in
Russiathere exist only two serious, truly strong parties: the Party of
Reaction, embracing the whole world of State and class privilege and
resting upon personal, inheritable property and the resulting exploitation
o f the peoples toil, resting upon divine right, family authority, and State
law, and the Party o f Social Revolution, which steadfastly aims at the
final annihilation o f this decrepit, criminal world, in order to build upon
its ruins a world in which no special privilege will exist, a world based
upon common labor obligatory for all, upon free human right, and upon
human truth illuminated b y science.9
Thus, without hesitation, we include in the hostile party o f reaction not
only outspoken reactionaries and Jesuits, but likewise Liberal Constitution
alists and also the Radical Partythe party o f political republicans.
Bourgeois Socialism. Let us turn now to the Socialists, who also
divide into three essentially different parties. First o f all, we shall divide
 281 State Socialism Theories Weighed
them into two categories: the party of peaceful or bourgeois Socialists,
and the party o f Social Revolutionists. The latter is in turn subdivided
into revolutionary State Socialists and revolutionary Anarchist-Socialists,
the enemies of every State and every State principle.10
The party of peaceful bourgeois Socialists or, political social Jesuits,
belongs by its essence to the party of reaction. It comprises men o f various
political categories, who are flirting with Socialism only with the view
of strengthening their own party. There are conservatives who are
Socialists, there are Socialist priests, and liberal and radical Socialists. A ll
of them recognize in Socialism a formidable rising force, and every one
of them pulls it in his direction, hoping with its aid to restore the sinking
and decrepit vitality of his respective party.
Among the great number of these malicious exploiters o f Socialism are
to be found, here and there, sincere and well-meaning people who really
want to see an improvement in the lot of the proletariat, but who lack
sufficient energy of mind and will to place before themselves the social
problem in all its formidable reality, in order to recognize the absolute
irreconcilability o f the past with the future or even the present day with
the morrow, and who waste their days in vain, idle efforts to reconcile
those contradictions. T h ey are sincere, it is true, but their sincerity causes
great harm, covering up the insincerity o f the malicious exploiters o f
Socialism.11
The peaceful Socialists o f all denominations agree upon one essential
point which determines quite concretely their reactionary trend and
dooms even the most sincere among them to merge sooner or later with
the party of deliberate and conscious reactionthat is, if they do not
prefer to throw in their lot beforehand with the party o f revolutionary
Socialism.12
Class Ties Stronger Than Convictions W ith Bourgeois Socialists. Life
dominates thought and determines the will Here is a truth which should
never be lost sight of whenever we want to get our bearings in the realm
of political and social phenomena. If we want to establish a sincere and
complete community o f thought among men, we must found it upon the
same conditions of life, upon a community o f interests. And since, b y the
very conditions of their respective existence, there exists a gulf between
the bourgeois and the proletarian worlds, one being the exploiting and the
other the exploited world, I conclude that if a man, bom and raised in
a bourgeois environment, wishes sincerely and without any phrase
mongering to become a friend and brother of the workers, he must
renounce all the conditions o f his past existence, all his bourgeois habits,
break off all ties of feelings, vanity, and mind which bind him to the
 282 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
bourgeois world, and, turning his back upon the latter, becoming its enemy
and declaring relentless war upon it, plunge completely and unreservedly
into the workers world,13
If he does not find within himself a passion for justice sufficiently strong
to inspire this resolution and courage, let him in that case not deceive him
self and let him not deceive the workers: he will never become their
friend. His abstract thoughts, his dreams of justice, may carry him away
to the point o f joining the cause with the exploited in moments o f reflec
tion, in moments of theoretic contemplation and calm when nothing is
stirring, when quiet reigns in the world of exploiters. But let there come a
moment of great social crisis when those two worlds opposed to each other
meet in a supreme struggleand all the bonds tying him to his present
life inevitably will pull him back into the world of exploiters. This already
has happened to many of our former friends and always will happen to
the bourgeois republicans and Socialists.14
T h e Intermediary Group of Socialists. In between the reactionary
majority and the small minority o f people wholly and sincerely devoted
to the cause o f freedom for the people, there is in the world of State and
class privilege a category o f persons, quite considerable in number and in
the deleterious influence which it has exercised upon the toiling people.
This category embraces all those who have devoted themselves, with their
minds and hearts, to the cause o f the people, but who, b y their social
position, b y the material political advantages accruing from that position,
and by their habits, and social and family ties, belong to a world which is
dead set against that cause.
Those are unfortunate individuals, but they are harmful nevertheless.
Fooling themselves and the masses o f people b y the candor o f their
aspirations, and apparently motivated by a genuine love for the people,
the best of them, obeying the iron law, according to which the social
position of a given person outweighs as a determining factor his subjective
wishes, they serve the cause of reaction, without even being aware of it,
as it happens quite often, ever mouthing phrases conveying their alleged
interest in the peoples weal and the peoples emancipation. It is such
persons that crowd the ranks of the parties of political republicans and
bourgeois Socialists, and also the ranks o f the party o f social-revolutionary
dictatorship or the social-revolutionary State.u
Danger of the State C ult Among Socialists. Men belonging to this cat
egory, by joining the International, may become really dangerous to it.
Like true demagogues, they aim to abolish the existing States only in
order to create a new form o f Statethat is, domination, if not for the
benefit of their material interests, at least for the gratification o f their
ambition and vanity, and incidentally resulting in perceptible material
benefits. Those persons are dangerous because they carry with them the
masses of the people, conniving at the same time at a dangerous passion and
283 State Socialism Theories W eighed
a dangerous prejudice on the part o f the latter: the passion for revenge
which makes the people seek, to its own detriment, self-satisfaction,
emancipation, and salvation in the wholesale annihilation o f persons but not
of things, not of the regimes which constitute the power of the individuals
belonging to the State and class hierarchy, whose moral degeneration can
be laid directly at the door of this social order.
The dangerous prejudice on the part o f the people consists in the bias,
unfortunately deep-seated, in favor of a strong State powerof the people,
of course, and not of a class hierarchyas if the official power of the
State can ever become the power o f the people and as if such power is not
in itself the unquestionable source and origin of classes and class hierarchy.16
T h e Distinguishing Characteristic of a Bourgeois Socialist. Here is
an infallible sign by which workers can discern a sham Socialist, a bour
geois Socialist: If, in speaking to them o f revolution, or, if you please, o f
social transformation, he tells them that a political change must precede
the economic change; if he denies that both those revolutions have to
take place at once, or even that a political revolution should be something
else than the immediate and direct carrying out o f a full social liquidation
let the workers turn their back upon him, for he is nothing but a fool, or
a hypocritical exploiter.17
One cannot really be a free thinker without being at the same time a
Socialist in the larger sense of the word; it is ridiculous to talk about free
thought and at the same time to aspire toward a unitary, authoritarian,
and bourgeois republic.18

c h a p t e r 4 Criticism o f Marxism

N ot only are we averse to the idea of persuading our Slav brothers to

join the ranks of the Social-Democratic party of German workers, headed
by the duumvirate invested with dictatorial powerMarx and Engels-
followed by Bebel, Liebknecht, and a few Jewish litterateurs. On the
contrary, we shall use all efforts to turn the Slavic proletariat away from
a suicidal union with that party, which, b y its tendency, aims, and means,
is not a folk party, but a purely bourgeois party, and is in addition a
German party, that is, anti-Slavic.1
T he Fallacious Premise of the Doctrinaire Revolutionists. Idealists
of all sorts, metaphysicians, positivists, those who uphold the priority of
science over life, the doctrinaire revolutionistsall of them champion,
with equal zeal although differing in their argumentation, the idea of
 284 T H E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
the State and State power, seeing in them, quite logically from their point
of view, the only salvation o f society. Quite logically, I say, having taken
as their basis the teneta fallacious tenet in our opinionthat thought is
prior to life, and abstract theory is prior to social practice, and that there
fore sociological science must become the starting point for social up
heavals and social reconstructionthey necessarily arrived at the con
clusion 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 o f the
people; and that on the morrow of the Revolution the new social organi
zation 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 b y the dictatorial power of this
learned minority, allegedly expressing the general will of the people.3
T h e Common Ground of the Theory of Revolutionary Dictatorship
and the Theory of the State. It is upon this fiction o f peoples represen
tation and upon the actual fact o f the masses o f people being ruled by a
small handful of privileged individuals elected, or for that matter not even
elected, b y throngs herded together on election day and ever ignorant of
w h y and whom they elect; it is upon this fictitious and abstract expression
of the fancied general will and thought o f the people, o f which the living
and real people have not the slightest conceptionthat the theory o f the
State and that of revolutionary dictatorship are based in equal measure.
Between revolutionary dictatorship and the State principle the differ
ence is only in the external situation. In substance both are one and the
same: the ruling o f the majority b y the minority in the name o f the
alleged stupidity of the first and the alleged superior intelligence o f the
second. Therefore both are equally reactionary, both having as their
result the invariable consolidation o f the political and economic privileges
o f the ruling minority and the political and economic enslavement o f the
masses o f people.8
Doctrinaire Socialists Are the Friends of the State. N o w it is clear
w h y the doctrinaire Socialists who have for their aim the overthrow o f the
existing authorities and regimes in order to build upon the ruins of the
latter a dictatorship o f 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. T hey are enemies of the powers-that-be only because they
cannot take their places. T hey are enemies o f the existing political insti
tutions 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, b y freeing the
toiling masses, would deprive this would-be revolutionary minority o f all
hope o f putting the people into a new harness and heap upon them the
blessings of their governmental measures*
285 Criticism o f Marxism
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 o f 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 o f Marx, are ever taking the side o f the State protagonists
against the peoples revolution.8
Lassalles Program. N o one, outside of Lassalle, could explain and
prove so convincingly to the German workers that under the given
economic conditions o f today the situation of the proletariat not only
cannot be radically changed, but, on the contrary, b y 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 o f
workers and only for a very brief period.
Thus far we agree with Lassalle. But from this point on, w e begin to
differ with him. A s 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 o f their lot, and second, that so long as the bourgeois State
exists, bourgeois privileges will remain impregnablehaving 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 o f the State against the bourgeoisie for the
benefit o f 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.8
Socialism Via Peaceful Reform. H ow 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. Marxs 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 o f universal suffrage, for the right o f the people
to elect State representatives and authorities.
Having won this right, the people would send their own representatives
 2S6 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
to the Parliament, which in turn, by various decrees and enactments,
would transform the given State into a Peoples State (Volks-Staat). And
the first task of this Peoples 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 assim
ilating it. W hen this process of absorption has been completed, then the
period o f the radical change of society will dawn upon mankind.7
T h e Fiction of the Peoples State. 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 b y the working class, is to raise the
proletariat to the position of a ruling class. . . . The proletariat will central
ize the instruments of production in the hands of the State, that is, the
proletariat raised to the position of a ruling class. 8
W e already have expressed our abhorrence for the theories of Lassalle
and Marx, theories which counseled the workersif not as their ultimate
ideal, at least as their next chief aimto form a Peoples State, which,
according to their interpretation, will only be the proletariat raised to
the position o f a ruling class.9
. . . But the State connotes domination, and domination connotes
exploitation, which proves that the term the Peoples State ( Volks-Staat),
which unfortunately still remains the watchword of the German Social-
Democratic Party, is a ridiculous contradiction, a fiction, a falsehood-
doubtless an unconscious falsehoodand for the proletariat a very dan
gerous pitfall. The State, however popular it be made in form, will always
be an institution of domination and exploitation, and it will therefore ever
remain a permanent source of slavery and misery. Consequently there is
no other means of emancipating the people economically and politically,
of providing them with well-being and freedom, but to abolish the State,
all States, and once and for all do away with that which until now has
been called politics.10
T h e Implication of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. 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 b y the city and factory proletariat; or considered
from the national point o f view, the Slavs, for instance, will assume, for
287 Criticism o f Marxism
precisely the same reason, the same position o f slavish subjection to the
victorious German proletariat which the latter now holds with respect to
its own bourgeoisie,11
If there is a State, there must necessarily be domination, and therefore
slavery; a State without slavery, overt or concealed, is unthinkableand
that is w hy we are enemies of the State,
W hat does it mean; the proletariat raised into a ruling class?1 W ill the
proletariat as a whole be at the head o f the government? There are about
forty million Germans, W ill 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. B y a peoples
government they mean the governing o f people by means o f a small
number o f representatives elected by the people. Universal suffragethe
right o f the whole people to elect its so-called representatives and rulers
of the Statethis is the last word of the Marxists as well as o f the demo
cratic school. And this is a falsehood behind which lurks the despotism o f
a governing minority, a falsehood which is all the more dangerous in that
it appears as the ostensible expression of a peoples will.18
Thus, from whatever angle we approach the problem, we arrive at
the same sorry result: the rule of great masses of people b y a small
privileged minority. But, the Marxists say, this minority will consist of
workers. Yes, indeed, o f 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.18
Dictatorship Cannot Beget Freedom. But these elected representa
tives will be convinced Socialists, and learned Socialists at that. T h e words
learned Socialist and scientific Socialism which are met with con
stantly in the works and speeches o f the Lassalleans and Marxists, prove
only that this would-be peoples State will be nothing else but despotic
rule over the toiling masses b y 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 gov
ernment b y 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 o f this government will be to educate and uplift the
 288 T H E P O L I T I C A L P H I L O S O P H Y OF B A K U N I N
peopleeconomically and politicallyto 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 b y itself into
an altogether free organization o f economic interests and communes.14
Here we have an obvious contradiction. If their State is going to be a
genuine peoples State, w hy should it then dissolve itselfand if its rule is
necessary for the real emancipation o f the people, how dare they call it a
peoples State? Our polemic had the effect o f making them realize that
freedom or Anarchism, that is, the free organization o f workers from
below upward, is the ultimate aim o f social development, and that every
State, their own peoples State included, is a yoke, which means that it
begets despotism on one hand and slavery on the other.15
T h ey say that this State yokethe dictatorshipis a necessary transi
tional 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. T h ey maintain that only a dictator
shiptheir dictatorship, o f coursecan create the will o f the people, while
our answer to this is: N o 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 b y freedom, that is, b y a universal rebel
lion on the part o f the people and free organization of the toiling masses
from the bottom up.
Powerfully Centralized State the Goal of the Marxists. W hile the
political and social theory o f the anti-State Socialists or Anarchists leads
them steadily toward a full break with all governments, and with all
varieties o f bourgeois policy, leaving no other w ay out but a social
revolution, the opposite theory o f the State Communists and scientific
authority also inevitably draws and enmeshes its partisans, under the
pretext o f political tactics, into ceaseless compromises with governments
and political parties; that is, it pushes them toward downright reaction.15
The basic point o f Lassalles politico-social program and the Com
munist theory o f Marx is the (imaginary) emancipation o f the proletariat
by means o f 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 o f
bourgeois capital. H ow can the State (be imbued with such a will? There
are only tw o means whereby that can be done.
The proletariat ought to wage a revolution in order to capture the
Statea 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. Y et 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 o f the Communist Party
 289 Criticism o f Marxism
in a word, to M. Marx and his friends, who will begin to emancipate it
in their own fashion.
T h ey 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. T h ey 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 armiesindustrial and agricultural armies under the direct command
of the State engineers who will constitute the new privileged scientific-
polirical class.
One can see then what a shining goal the German Communist school has
set up before the people.17

c h a p t e r 5 Social-Democratic
Program Examined

The Workers Social-Democratic Party and the General Association

of German Workers founded b y Lassalle are both Socialist organizations in
the sense that they want a socialist reform in the relations between capital
and labor. The Lassalleans, as well as the party of Eisenach, are unanimous
on that pointthat in order to obtain this reform, it is necessary first to
reform the State, and that if this cannot be achieved in a peaceful manner,
by means of extensive propaganda and a peaceful, legal labor movement,
then force should be resorted to in order to bring about State reformin
other words, the change is to be effected through a political revolution.
According to the almost unanimous view of the German Socialists, a
political revolution should precede a social revolution, which in my
opinion is a great and fatal error, because every political revolution taking
place prior to and consequently without a social revolution must neces
sarily be a bourgeois revolution, and a bourgeois revolution can only be
instrumental in bringing about bourgeois Socialismthat is, it is bound to
end in a new, more hypocritical and more skilful, but no less oppressive,
exploitation of the proletariat b y the bourgeoisie.1
This unfortunate idea of a political revolution which, so the German
Socialists say, is to precede the Social Revolution, opens wide the door of
the Workers Social-Democratic Party to all the exclusively political
radical democrats of Germany who have very little Socialism in them.
Thus it has happened that on several occasions the W orkers Social-Dem-
 290 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

ocratic Party was prevailed upon by its leadersnot b y its own collective
instinct, which is socialistic to a much greater degree than the ideas of its
leadersto fraternize with the bourgeois democrats of the Peoples Party
( Volkspartei), an exclusively political party which is not only foreign but
downright hostile to any serious Socialism.2
T h e Program of the Eisenach Congress. During the whole year, from
August, 1868, to August, 1869, diplomatic relations were carried on between
the chief representatives of both the workers and bourgeois parties, the
final result of those negotiations being the famous program of the Eisenach
Congress (August 7-9, 1869), at which the Workers Social-Democratic
Party constituted itself as such. This program was a true compromise be
tween the socialist and revolutionary program o f the International W ork
ingmens Association, so clearly set forth at the Brussels and Basel Con
gresses, and the well known program of bourgeois democratism.8
Article I o f this program strikes us first of ail because of its utter dis
agreement with both the text and the spirit o f the International Associa
tions basic program. The Social-Democratic Party wants to institute a
free peoples State. Those wordsfree and people'ssonnd well, but the
third word, Statef does not ring true to the ears of a real revolutionary
Socialist, a resolute and sincere enemy of all bourgeois institutions with no
exception; it is in flagrant contradiction to the very aim of the International
Association, and it takes all meaning out of the words free and people's.*
The International Workingmen's Association implies the negation of
the State, every State necessarily being a national State. O r do the authors
o f the program understand by it an international State, a universal State,
or, in a more restricted sense, a State embracing all the countries of Western
Europe, where there exists (using the favorite expression of the German
Social-Democrats) modem society or civilization, that is, a society
wherein capital, which has become the sole owner of labor, is concentrated
in the hands of a privileged class, the bourgeoisie, reducing the workers to
poverty and slavery? O r do the Social-Democratic Party leaders aim to set
up a State which would embrace all western Europe: England, France,
Germany, all the Scandinavian countries, all the Slavic countries subject to
Austria, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, and Portugal?5
N o, their imagination and political appetite do not embrace so many
countries at once. A ll they want now, with a passion which they do not
even take the trouble to conceal, is the organization of their German
fatherland, of a great pan-German unify. It is the setting up of an exclu
sively German State that the first article o f their program poses as the prin
cipal and supreme goal of the workers1 democratic socialistic party. Th ey
are political patriots above everything else.
W here then does their internationalism come in? W hat do these Ger
man patriots have to offer to the international brotherhood of workers of
all countries? Nothing but socialist phrases having no possibility of realiza
291 Social-Democratic Program Examined
tion, phrases belied b y the principal, exclusively political basis of their
programe German State.*
Indeed, since the German workers are to aim above all at the setting
up of a German State, the solidarity which should, from the point of view
of their economic and social interests, unite them with their brothers, the
exploited workers of the whole world, and which should, in my opinion,
be the principal and only basis for workers associations in all countries
this international solidarity is necessarily sacrificed to patriotism, to the
national passion. It may therefore happen that the workers of a certain
country, divided between two loyalties, between two contradictory tend
enciesAc socialist solidarity of labor and the political patriotism of the
national Stateand sacrificing (as, for that matter, they must if they obey
the first article of the German Social-Democratic Party), sacrificing, as I
said, international solidarity to patriotism, the workers may find themselves
in the rather unfortunate position of having to unite themselves with their
own bourgeoisie against the workers of a foreign State. And this is pre
cisely what has happened to the German workers at the present moment.7
oyalty to National State Incompatible W ith Socialism. It is clear
that so long as the goal of the German workers consists in setting up a
national State, no matter how free or how much of a peoples State they
imagine it to beand there is quite a distance between imagining those
things and carrying them out, especially when that imagination presup
poses an impossible reconciliation o f two elements, of two principles mutu
ally canceling each other (the State and the freedom of the people)it is
clear that they will ever continue to sacrifice the liberty of the people to
the greatness of the State, Socialism to politics, and justice and international
brotherhood to patriotism. It is clear that their own economic emancipa
tion will remain a beautiful dream relegated to the far-off future.8
It is impossible to attain simultaneously two contradictory ends. Since
Socialism and social revolution imply destruction of the State, it is clear
that those who aim to set up a State must renounce Socialism and must
sacrifice the economic emancipation of the masses to the political might of
some privileged party.
The German Social-Democratic Party has to sacrifice the economic
emancipation, and consequently the political emancipation of the prole-
lariator rather its emancipation from politicsto the ambition and the
triumph o f bourgeois democracy. This follows plainly from the second and
third articles of the program o f the Social-Democratic Party.
The first paragraphs of Article 2 are in full agreement with the social
istic principle of the International Workingmens Association, whose pro
gram they almost literally reproduce. But the fourth paragraph of the same
article, declaring that political liberty is the preliminary condition o f
economic emancipation, completely destroys the practical value of this
recognition in principle. It can only signify the following:
 292 TH E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
Workers, you are the slaves, the victims, of property and capital. You
wish to free yourselves from this economic yoke. V e ry well, your wishes
are completely legitimate. But in order to realize them, you must first help
zts to effect a political revolution. Later on, we will help you to wage the
Social Revolution. Let us first establish, with your strength, a democratic
State, a good bourgeois democracy, as in Switzerland, and then-then we
will give you the same kind of prosperity that the workers enjoy in
Switzerland. (Observe, for instance, the strikes in Geneva and Basel.)
In order to convince oneself that the incredible delusion fully expresses
the tendencies and the spirit of the German social democracy (of the pro
gram and not the natural aspirations of the German workers comprising
that party) one has only to study Article 3, which enumerates all the
immediate and next demands (die nchsten Forderungen) to be put
forth by the party in its peaceful and legal campaign agitation.
A ll these demands, except the tenth, which was not even suggested by
the authors of the program, but was added during the discussion provoked
by a motion introduced by a member of the Eisenach Congressall those
demands have an exclusively political character. All the clauses recom
mended as the principal objects of the immediate practical action of the
party amount to nothing but the well-known program of bourgeois dem
ocracy-universal suffrage, with direct legislation by the people; abolition
of ail political privileges; arming of the nation; separation of the Church
from the State, and the School from the Church; free and compulsory
education; freedom of press, association, assembly, and coalition; and con
verting all indirect taxes into a single, direct and progressive income tax.10
This then constitutes for the present the veritable object, the real aim
of this party: an exclusively political reform of the State, of the institu
tions and laws of the State. W as I not right in saying that this program
is socialistic only so far as its dreams of a far away future are concerned,
and that in reality it is nothing but a purely political and bourgeois pro
gram? And would I not be right in saying also that, were the Social-
Democratic Party of the German workers to be judged b y this program
which I would never do, knowing that the genuine aspirations of the
German workers go much beyond itwe should have the right to think
that the aim pursued in creating this party was that of making use o f the
working masses as a blind tool for attaining the political objectives of the
German bourgeois democracy?11
Protection of Labor and State Credit to Co-operatives. This program
has only two planks which will not be to tfie liking of the bourgeoisie. The
first is contained in the second half of the eighth paragraph, Article 3,
which demands the establishing of a normal working day, the abolition
of child labor, and the limitation of women's work, three things at the
mention of which the bourgeois make w ry faces, because, being passionate
lovers of all liberties which they can turn to their own advantage, they
 293 Social-Democratic Program Examined
loudly demand for the proletariat freedom to let itself be exploited, and
freedom to oppress and overwhelm it with w ork without the State having
the right to interfere. However, times have become so difficult for our
poor capitalists that they have finally agreed to such State intervention
even in England, the social organization of which is, so far as I know,
far from being socialistic.12
Another plank, even more important and of a more definitely social
istic character, is contained in the tenth paragraph of Article 3, . . . which
demands State assistance and State credit for workers co-operation, and
especially for producers associations, with all the desirable guarantees of
freedom.
N o bourgeois will accept this plank of his own free will, it being in
absolute contradiction to what bourgeois democracy and bourgeois Social
ism call freedomin reality, the freedom to exploit the proletariat, which
is compelled to sell its labor to capital at the lowest price, compelled not
by any political or civil law whatever, but b y the economic situation in
which it finds itself through fear and terror of starvation.
This freedom, I say, does not fear the competition of workers associ
ationsneither consumers, producers, nor mutual credit associationsfor
the simple reason that workers organizations, left to their own resources,
will never be able to accumulate sufficiently strong aggregations o f capital
capable o f waging an effective struggle against bourgeois capital. Y et when
workers associations are supported b y the power of the State, when they
are backed b y the credit o f the State, not only will they be able to fight,
but, in the long run, they will be able to vanquish the industrial and com
mercial enterprises of the bourgeoisie, founded only with private capital
whether individual or collective capital, represented b y joint-stock com
paniesthe State, of course, being the strongest o f all such companies.1*
Labor financed by the Stare-such is the fundamental principle o f
authoritarian Communism, o f State Socialism. The State, having become
the sole proprietoryat the end of a certain period of transition necessary
to have society pass, without any severe economic or political shocks, from
the present organization of bourgeois privilege to the future organization
o f official equality for allthe State also will have become the sole capital
ist, banker, money-lender, organizer, director o f all national work, and
rhe distributor of its profits. Such is the ideal, the fundamental principle
o f modem Communism.14
Political and Social Revolution Must Go Together. W e should ruth
lessly eliminate the politics o f bourgeois democrats or bourgeois Socialists
who, in declaring that political liberty is the preliminary condition of
economic emancipation, understand b y those words only the following:
Political reforms, or a political revolution, must precede economic reforms
nr an economic revolution; therefore the workers must ally themselves with
die more or less radical bourgeois in order to carry out a political revolu-
 294 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
tion together with the bourgeoisie, and then wage an economic revolution
against the latter.
W e loudly protest against this baneful theory, which can end only with
the workers being used once more as an instrument against themselves and
being turned over again to bourgeois exploitation.16
T o win political freedom first can signify no other thing but to win
this freedom only, leaving for the first days at least economic and social
relations in the same old state,that is, leaving the proprietors and capital
ists with their insolent wealth, and the workers with their poverty.16
But, it is argued, this freedom, once won, shall serve the workers later
as an instrument with which to win equality or economic justice.
Freedom is indeed a magnificent and powerful instrument. The ques
tion, however, is whether workers really can make use of it, whether it
will actually be in their possession, or whether, as has been the case until
now, their political liberty will prove to be only a deceitful appearance,
a mere fiction.17

c h a p t e r Stateless Socialism: Anarchism

Effect of the Great Principles Proclaimed by the French Revolution.

From the time when the Revolution brought down to the masses its Gospel
not the mystic but the rational, not the heavenly but the earthly, not the
divine but the human Gospel, the Gospel of the Rights of Manever since
it proclaimed that all men are equal, that all men are entitled to liberty
and equality, the masses of all European countries, of all the civilized world,
awakening gradually from the sleep which had kept them in bondage ever
since Christianity drugged them with its opium, began to ask themselves
whether they too, had the right to equality, freedom, and humanity.
As soon as this question was posed, the people, guided by their admirable
sound sense as well as by their instincts, realized that the first condition
o f their real emancipation, or of their humanization, was above all a radical
change in their economic situation. The question of daily bread is to them
justly the first question, for as it was noted b y Aristotle, man, in order to
think, in order to feel himself ^ree, in order to become man, must be freed
from the material cares of daily life. For that matter, the bourgeois, who
are so vociferous in their outcries against the materialism o f the people and
who preach to the latter the abstinences of idealism, know it very well,
for they themselves preach it only by word and not by example.
 295 Stateless Socialism: Anarchism
The second question arising before the peopiethat of leisure after
workis the indispensable condition of humanity. But bread and leisure
can never be obtained apart from a radical transformation of existing
society, and that explains w h y the Revolution, impelled by the implica
tions o f its own principles, gave birth to Socialism.1
Socialism Is Justice. . . . Socialism is justice. W hen w e speak of jus
tice, we understand thereby not the justice contained in the Codes and in
Roman jurisprudencewhich were based to a great extent upon facts of
violence achieved b y force, violence consecrated by time and b y the
benedictions of some church or other (Christian or pagan), and as such
accepted as absolute principles, from which all law is to be deduced b y a
process of logical reasoningno, we speak of that justice which is based
solely upon human conscience, the justice to be found in the consciousness
o f every maneven in that of childrenand which can be expressed in a
single word: equity.
This universal justice which, owing to conquests by force and religious
influences, has never yet prevailed in the political or juridical or economic
worlds, should become the basis of the new world. W ithout it there can
be neither liberty, nor republic, nor prosperity, nor peace. It then must
govern our resolutions in order that we work effectively toward the
establishment of peace. And this justice urges us to take upon ourselves
the defense o f the interests of the terribly maltreated people and demand
their economic and social emancipation along with political freedom.
Th e Basic Principle of Socialism. W e do not propose here, gentle
men, this or any other socialist system. W hat we demand now is the pro
claiming anew of the great principle of the French Revolution: that every
human being should have the material and moral means to develop alt his
humanity, a principle which, in our opinion, is to be translated into the
following problem:
T o organize society in such a manner that every individual, man or
woman, should find, upon entering life, approximately equal means for
the development of his or her diverse faculties and their utilization in his
or her work. And to organize such a society that, rendering impossible the
exploitation o f anyones labor, will enable every individual to enjoy the
social wealth, which in reality is produced only b y collective labor, but
to enjoy it only in so far as he contributes directly toward the creation
of that wealth.
State Socialism Rejected. The carrying out of this task will of course
take centuries of development. But history has already brought it forth
and henceforth we cannot ignore it without condemning ourselves to
utter impotence. W e hasten to add here that we vigorously reject any
attempt at social organization which would not admit the fullest liberty
of individuals and organizations, or which would require the setting up o f
any regimenting power whatever. In the name o f freedom, which we
 296 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
recognize as the only foundation and the only creative principle of any
organization, economic or political, we shall protest against anything even
remotely resembling State Communism, or State Socialism.2
Abolition ol the Inheritance Law. The only thing which, in our
opinion, the State can and should do, is first to modify little b y little the
inheritance law so as to arrive as soon as possible at its complete aboli
tion. That law being purely a creation of the State, and one o f the essential
conditions o f the very existence of the authoritarian and divine State, it
can and should be abolished b y freedom in the State. In other words, the
State should dissolve itself into a society freely organized in accordance
with the principles of justice. Inheritance right, in our opinion, should be
abolished, for so long as it exists there will be hereditary economic inequal
ity, not the natural inequality of individuals, but the artificial man-made
inequality of classesand the latter will always beget hereditary in
equality in the development and shaping o f minds, continuing to be the
source and consecration o f all political and social inequalities.
T h e task of justice is to establish equality for everyone, inasmuch as
that equality will depend upon the economic and political organization o f
societyan equality with which everyone is going to begin his life, so
that everyone, guided b y his own nature, will be the product of his own
efforts. In our opinion, the property of the deceased should accrue to a
social fund for the instruction and education of children of both sexes,
including their maintenance from birth until they come of age. As Slavs
and as Russians, we shall add that with us the fundamental social idea, based
upon the general and traditional instinct of our populations, is that land,
the property of all the people, should be owned only by those who culti
vate it with their own hands.3
W e are convinced, gentlemen, that this principle is just, that it is the
essential and inevitable condition of all serious social reform, and that
consequently Western Europe in turn will not fail to recognize and accept
this principle, notwithstanding the difficulties of its realization in some
countries, as in France, for instance, where the majority of peasants own
the land which they cultivate, but where most o f those very peasants will
soon end up by owning next to nothing, owing to the parceling out o f
land coming as the inevitable result o f the political and economic system
now prevailing in France. W e shall, however, refrain from offering any
proposals on the land question. . . . W e shall confine ourselves now to
proposing the following declaration:
T h e Declaration of Socialism. Convinced that the serious realiza
tion of liberty, justice, and peace will be impossible so long as the vast
majority of die population remains dispossessed of elementary needs, so
long as it is deprived o f education and is condemned to political and social
insignificance and slaveryin fact if not b y lawb y poverty as well as b y
the necessity of working without rest or leisure, producing all the wealth
 297 Stateless Socialism: Anarchism
upon which the world now prides itself, and receiving in return only such
a small part thereof that it hardly suffices to assure its livelihood for the
next day;
Convinced that for all that mass o f population, terribly maltreated for
centuries, the problem of bread is the problem of mental emancipation, of
freedom and humanity;
Convinced that freedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice,
and that Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality;
The League [for Peace and Freedom] loudly proclaims the necessity
of a radical social and economic reconstruction, having for its aim the
emancipation of peoples labor from the yoke of capital and property
owners, a reconstruction based upon strict justiceneither juridical nor
theological nor metaphysical justice, but simply human justice--upon posi
tive science and upon the widest freedom.4
Organization of Productive Forces in Place of Political Power. It is
necessary to abolish completely, both in principle and in fact, all that
which is called political power; for, so long as political power exists, there
will be ruler and ruled, masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited. Once
abolished, political power should be replaced by an organization of pro
ductive forces and economic service.5
Notwithstanding the enormous development of modem statesa devel
opment which in its ultimate phase is quite logically reducing the State to
an absurdityit is becoming evident that the days of the State and the
State principle are numbered. Already we can see approaching the full
emancipation of the toiling masses and their free social organization, free
from governmental intervention, formed b y economic associations o f the
people and brushing aside all the old State frontiers and national distinct
ion s, and having as its basis only productive labor, humanized labor, having
one common interest in spite o f its diversity.
T h e Ideal of the People. This ideal of course appears to the people
as signifying first of all the end o f want, the end o f poverty, and the full
satisfaction of all material needs b y means o f collective labor, equal and
obligatory for all, and then, as the end of domination and the free organiza
tion o f the peoples lives in accordance with their needsnot from the
top down, as we have it in the State, but from the bottom up, an organ
ization formed by the people themselves, apart from all governments and
parliaments, a free union of associations of agricultural and factory workers,
of communes, regions, and nations, and finally, in the more remote future,
the universal human brotherhood, triumphing above the ruins o f all States.7
T h e Program of a Free Society. Outside o f the Mazzinian system,
which is the system o f the republic in the form o f a State, there is no
other system but that of the republic as a commune, the republic as a
federation, a Socialist and a genuine peoples republicthe system o f Anar
chism. It is the politics of the Social Revolution, which aims at the aboli-
 298 THE P O LITIC A L PH ILO S O P H Y OF BA K TJN IN

tion o f the State, and the economic, altogether free organization of the
people, an organization from below upward, by means of a federation.8
. . . There will be no possibility of the existence of a political govern
ment, for this government will be transformed into a simple administration
of common affairs,9
Our program can be summed up in a few words:
Peace, emancipation, and the happiness o f the oppressed.
W ar upon all oppressors and all despoilers.
Full restitution to workers: all the capital, the factories, and all the
instruments of w ork and raw materials to go to the associations, and the
land to those who cultivate it with their own hands.
Liberty, justice, and fraternity in regard to all human beings bom
upon the earth.
Equality for all.
T o all, with no distinction whatever, all the means o f development, edu
cation, and upbringing, and the equal possibility of living while working.10
Organizing of a society b y means o f a free federation from below up
ward, of workers associations, industrial as well as agricultural, scientific
as well as literary associationsfirst into a commune, then a federation of
communes into regions, o f regions into nations, and o f nations into an
international fraternal association.11
Correct Tactics During a Revolution. In a social revolution, which in
everything is diametrically opposed to a political revolution, the actions
of individuals hardly count at all, whereas the spontaneous action of the
masses is everything. A ll that individuals can do is to clarify, propagate,
and w ork out ideas corresponding to the popular instinct, and, what is
more, to contribute their incessant efforts to revolutionary organization of
the natural power o f the massesbut nothing else beyond that; the rest
can and should be done b y the people themselves. A n y other method would
lead to political dictatorship, to the re-emergence o f the State, of privileges,
o f inequalities, of all the oppressions of the Statethat is, it would lead in
a roundabout but logical w ay toward re-establishment of political, social,
and economic slavery o f the masses of people.
Varfin and all his friends, like all sincere Socialists, and in general like
all workers bom and brought up among the people, shared to a high
degree this perfectly legitimate bias ^gainst the initiative coming from
isolated individuals, against the domination exercised by superior individ
uals, and being above all consistent, they extended the same prejudice and
distrust to their own persons.
Revolution by Decrees Is Doomed to Failure. Contrary to the ideas
of the authoritarian Communists, altogether fallacious ideas in m y opinion,
that the Social Revolution can be decreed and organized by means of a
dictatorship or a Constituent Assemblyour friends, the Parisian Social
ists, held the opinion that that revolution can be waged and brought to
 299 Stateless Socialism: Anarchism
its full development only through the spontaneous and continued mass
action of groups and associations of the people.12
Our Parisian friends were a thousand times right. For, indeed, there
is no mind, much as it may be endowed with the quality of a genius,or
if we speak of a collective dictatorship consisting of several hundred
supremely endowed individualsthere is no combination o f intellects so
vast as to be able to embrace all the infinite multiplicity and diversity o f
the real interests, aspirations, wills, and needs constituting in their totality
the collective will of the people; there is no intellect that can devise a
social organization capable of satisfying each and all.
Such an organization would ever be a Procrustean bed into which vio
lence, more or less sanctioned b y the State, would force the unfortunate
society. But it is this old system of organization based upon force that the
Social Revolution should put an end to b y giving full liberty to the
masses, groups, communes, associations, and even individuals, and b y
destroying once and for all the historic cause of all violencethe very
existence of the State, the fall of which will entail the destruction o f all
the iniquities of juridical right and all the falsehood of various cults, that
right and those cults having ever been simply the complaisant consecra
tion, ideal as well as real, o f all violence represented, guaranteed, and
authorized b y the State.13
It is evident that only when the State has ceased to exist humanity will
obtain its freedom, and the true interests o f society, of all groups, of all
local organizations, and likewise o f all the individuals forming such organ
ization, will find their real satisfaction.14
Free Organization to Follow Abolition of the State. Abolition o f the
State and the Church should be the first and indispensable condition of
the real enfranchisement o f society. It will be only after this that society can
and should begin its own reorganization; that, however, should take place
not from the top down, not according to an ideal plan mapped b y a few
sages or savants, and not by means of decrees issued b y some dictatorial
power or even b y a National Assembly elected b y universal suffrage. Such
a system, as I have already said, inevitably would lead to the formation of
a governmental aristocracy, that is, a class of persons which has nothing in
common with the masses of people; and, to be sure, this class would
again turn to exploiting and enthralling the masses under the pretext of
common welfare or of the salvation of the State.15
Freedom Must Go Hand-in-Hand W ith Equality. I am a convinced
partisan of economic and social equality, for I know that outside o f this
equality, freedom, justice, human dignity, morality, and the well-being of
individuals as well as the prosperity of nations are all nothing but so many
falsehoods. Bat being at the same time a partisan of freedomthe first
condition of humanityI believe that equality should be established in the
world by a spontaneous organization of labor and collective property, by
 300 THE P O LITICA L P H ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

the free organization of producers associations into communes, and the

free federation of communesbut nowise b y means of the supreme and
tutelary action of the State.
T he Difference Between Authoritarian and Libertarian Revolutionists.
It is this point which mainly divides the Socialists or revolutionary col
lectivists from the authoritarian Communists, the partisans of the absolute
initiative of the State. The goal of both is the same: both parties want the
creation o f a new social order based exclusively upon collective labor,
under economic conditions that are equal for allthat is, under conditions
o f collective ownership of the tools of production.
O nly the Communists imagine that they can attain through develop
ment and organization o f the political power o f the working classes, and
chiefly of the city proletariat, aided b y bourgeois radicalismwhereas the
revolutionary Socialists, the enemies of all ambiguous alliances, believe, on
the contrary, that this common goal can be attained not through the politi
cal but through the social (and therefore anti-political) organization and
power of the working masses of the cities and villages, including all those
who, though belonging b y birth to the higher classes, have broken with
their past o f their own free will, and have openly joined the proletariat
and accepted its program.1
T h e Methods of the Communists and the Anarchists. Hence the two
different methods. The Communists believe that it is necessary to organ
ize the forces of the workers in order to take possession of the political
might of the State. The revolutionary Socialists organize with the view
of destroying, or if you prefer a more refined expression, of liquidating
the State. The Communists are the partisans of the principle and practice
of authority, while revolutionary Socialists place their faith only in free
dom. Both are equally the partisans of science, which is to destroy super
stition and take the place of faith; but the first want to impose science
upon the people, while the revolutionary collectivists try to diffuse science
and knowledge among the people, so that the various groups of human
society, when convinced by propaganda, may organize and spontaneously
combine into federations, in accordance with their natural tendencies and
their real interests, but never according to a plan traced in advance and
imposed upon the ignorant masses b y a few superior minds.11
Revolutionary Socialists believe that there is much more of practical
reason and intelligence in the instinctive aspirations and real needs of the
masses of people than in the profound minds o f all these learned doctors
and self-appointed tutors of humanity, who, having before them the sorry
examples of so many abortive attempts to make humanity happy, still
intend to keep on working in the same direction. But revolutionary Social
ists believe, on the contrary, that humanity has permitted itself to be
ruled for a long time, much too long, and that the source o f its misfor
tune lies not in this nor in any other form of government but in the prin
 3OI Stateless Socialism: Anarchism
ciple and the very existence of the government; whatever its nature may be.
It is this difference o f opinion, which already has become historic, that
now exists between the scientific Communism, developed by the German
school and partly accepted b y American and English Socialists, and Proud-
honism, extensively developed and pushed to its ultimate conclusions, and
by now accepted by the proletariat of the Latin countries. Revolutionary
Socialism has made its first brilliant and practical appearance in the Paris
Commune.18
On the Pan-German banner is written; Retention and strengthening o f
the State at any cost. On our banner, the social-revolutionary banner, on
the contrary, are inscribed, in fiery and bloody letters: the destruction of
all Stales, the annihilation o f bourgeois civilization, free and spontaneous
organization from below upward, b y means o f free associations, the organ
ization of the unbridled rabble of toilers, of all emancipated humanity, and
the creation o f a new universally human world.19
Before creating, or rather aiding the people to create, this new organ
ization, it is necessary to achieve a victory. It is necessary to overthrow
that which is, in order to be able to establish that which should be. . . .20

c h a p t e r 7

International

Awakening of Labor on the Eve of the International. In 1863 and

1864, the years o f the founding of the International, in nearly all of the
countries o f Europe, and especially those where modem industry had
reached its highest developmentin England, France, Belgium, Germany,
and Switzerlandtwo facts made themselves manifest, facts which facili
tated and practically made mandatory the creation o f the International.
The first was the simultaneous awakening in all the countries of the con
sciousness, courage, and spirit of the workers, following twelve or even
fifteen years of a state o f depression which came as a result of the terrible
debacle of 1848 and 1851. The second fact was that o f the marvelous
development of the wealth o f the bourgeoisie and, as its necessary accom
paniment, the poverty of the workers in all the countries. This was the
fact which spurred these workers to action, while their awakening con
sciousness and spirit endowed them with the essential faith.1
T h e Central Sections. But, as it often happens, this renascent faith
 302 THE P O LITIC A L PH ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

did not manifest itself at once among the great masses of the European
workers. Out of ail the countries of Europe there were only twosoon
followed by othersin which it made its first appearance. Even in those
privileged countries it was not the whole mass but a small number o f
little, widely scattered workers associations which felt within themselves
the stirrings o f a reborn confidence, felt it strongly enough to resume the
struggle; and in those associations it was at first a few rare individuals, the
more intelligent, the more energetic, the more devoted among them, and
in most cases those who already had been tried and developed b y previous
struggles, and who, full of hope and faith, mustered the courage to take the
initiative of starting the new movement.
Those individuals, meeting casually in London in 1864, in connection
with the Polish questiona problem of the highest political importance, but
one that was completely alien to the question of international solidarity
of laborformed, under the direct influence of the founders of the Inter
national, the first nucleus o f this great association. Then, having returned
to their respective countriesFrance, Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland
the delegates formed nuclei in those lands. That is how the initial Central
Sections (o f the International) were set up.2
The Central Sections do not represent any special industry, since they
comprise the most advanced workers in all kinds of industries. Then what
do those sections represent? T h ey represent the idea o f the International
itself. W hat is their mission? The development and propagandizing of this
idea. And what is this idea? It is the emancipation not only o f workers in
such and such an industry or in such and such a country, but of all
workers in all industriesthe emancipation o f the workers of all the coun
tries in the world. It is the general emancipation of all those who, earning
with difficulty their miserable livelihood b y any productive labor what
ever, are economically exploited and politically oppressed b y capital, or
rather b y the owners and the privileged brokers of capital.
Such is the negative, militant, or revolutionary power of this idea. And
the positive force? It is the founding of a new social world, resting only
upon emancipated labor and spontaneously created upon the ruins of the
old world, b y the organization and the free federation o f workers asso
ciations liberated from the economic and political yoke of the privileged
classes.8
Those two aspects of the same question, one negative and the other
positive, are inseparable from each other.4
Central Sections Are Mere Ideological Groupings. The Central Sec
tions are the active and living centers where the new faith is preserved,
where it develops, and where it is being clarified. N o one joins them in
the capacity of a special worker of such and such a trade with the view
of forming any particular trade union organizations. Those who join those
sections are workers in general, having in view the general emancipation
303 Founding o f the Workers ' International
and organization of labor, and of the new social world based on labor. The
workers comprising the membership of those sections leave behind them
their character o f special or real workers, presenting themselves to the
organization as workers in general. Workers for what? W orkers for
the idea, the propaganda and organization of the economic and militant
might o f the International, workers for the Social Revolution.
The Central Sections represent an altogether different character from
that of the trade sections, even being diametrically opposed to them.
Whereas the latter, following a natural course of development, begin with
the fact in order to arrive at the idea, the Central Sections, following, on
the contrary, the course of ideal or abstract development, begin with the
idea in order to arrive at the fact. It is evident that in contradistinction to
the fully realistic or positivist method of the trade sections, the method of
the Central Sections appears to be artificial and abstract. This manner of
proceeding from the idea to the fact is precisely the one used by the ideal-
ists of all schools, theologians, and metaphysicians, whose final impotence
has by now become a matter of historical record. The secret o f this im
potence lies in the absolute impossibility of arriving at the real and concrete
fact by taking the absolute idea as the starting point.8
T h e Central Sections in Themselves W ould be Powerless to Draw
in Great Masses of Workers. If the International Workingmens Asso
ciation were made up only of Centra! Sections, undoubtedly it would
never attain even one hundredth part of the impressive power upon which
it is priding itself now. Those sections would be merely so many workers
academies where all questions would perpetually be discussed, including of
course the question of organization of labor, but without the slightest
attempt being made to carry it into practice, nor even having the possi
bility o f doing it. . . .6
. . . If the International were made up only o f Central Sections, the
latter probably would have succeeded by now in forming conspiracies for
the overthrow of the present order of things; but such conspiracies would
be confined only to mere intentions, being too impotent to attain their
goal since they would never be able to draw in more than a very small
number of workersthe most intelligent, most energetic, most convinced
and devoted among them. The vast majority, the millions o f proletarians,
would remain outside of those conspiracies, but in order to overthrow and
destroy the political and social order which now crushes us, it would be
necessary to have the co-operation of those millions.
Th e Empirical Approach of Workers to Their Problems. O nly indi
viduals, and a small number of them at that, can be carried away b y an
abstract and pure idea. The millions, the masses, not only of the prole
tariat but also of the enlightened and privileged classes, are carried away
only by the power and logic of facts, apprehending and envisaging most
of the time only their immediate interests or moved only by their mone
tary, more or less blind, passions. Therefore, in order to interest and draw
 304 THE PO LITICA L PH ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

the whole proletariat into the work of the International, it is necessary to

approach it not with general and abstract ideas, but with a living and
tangible comprehension of its own pressing problems, of which evils those
workers are aware in a concrete manner.
Their daily tribulations, although presenting to a social thinker a prob
lem of a general character and being actually only the particular effects
o f general and permanent causes, are in reality infinitely diverse, taking on
a multitude o f different aspects, produced b y a multitude of transitory
and contributory causes. Such is the daily reality of those evils. But the
mass of workers who are forced to live from hand to mouth and who find
hardly a moment of leisure in which to think of the next day, apprehend
the evils from which they suffer precisely and exclusively in the context
of this particular reality but never or scarcely ever in their general aspect.7
Concrete Statement Offers the Only Effective Approach to the Great
Mass of Workers. It follows then that in order to touch the heart and
gain the confidence, the assent, the adhesion, and the co-operation of the
illiterate legions of the proletariatand the vast majority o f proletarians
unfortunately still belong in this categoryit is necessary to begin to speak
to those workers not o f the general sufferings of the international prole
tariat as a whole, but of their particular, daily, altogether private mis
fortunes. It is necessary to speak to them of their own trade and the con
ditions of their work in the specific locality where they live; of the harsh
conditions and long hours of their daily work, of the small pay, the mean
ness of their employer, the high cost of living, and how impossible it is
for them properly to support and bring up a family.
And in laying before them the means to combat those evils and to
better their position, it is not necessary at all to speak to them at first of
the general and revolutionary means which now constitute the program of
action of the International Workingmens Association, such as the aboli
tion of individual hereditary property and the collectivization of property,
the abolition of the juridical right and that of the State, and their replace
ment b y the organization and free federation of producers1 associations.
The workers, in all probability, would hardly understand all that. It also
is possible that, finding themselves under the influence of the religious,
political, and social ideas which governments and priests have tried to
implant in their minds, they will turn away in anger and distrust from
any imprudent propagandist who tries to convert them by using such
arguments.
N o, they should be approached only by w ay of holding up before them
such means of struggle the usefulness of which they cannot fail to compre
hend, and which they are prone to accept upon the promptings o f their
good sense and daily experience. Those first elementary means are, as we
already have said, the establishing of complete solidarity with their fellow-
workers in the shop, in their own defense and in the struggle against their
305 Founding of the Workers' International
common master; and then the extension of this solidarity to ail workers
in the same trade and in the same locality in their joint struggle against
the employersthat is, their formal entrance as active members into the
section o f their trade, a section affiliated with the Internationa! W orking
mens Association.8
The economic fact, the conditions in a special industry and the particu
lar conditions o f exploitation of that industry by capital, the intimate and
particular solidarity of interests, o f needs, sufferings, and aspirations which
exist among all workers who are members of the same trade section-all
that forms the real basis of their association. The idea comes afterward as
the explanation or the adequate expression of the development and the
mental reflection of this fact in the collective consciousness.
Solidarity of Trade Union Members Rooted in Actuality. A worker
does not need any great intellectual preparation to become a member of
the trade union section [of the International] representing his trade. He is
a member of it, in quite a natural way, before even being aware of it. A il
he has to know is that he is being worked to death and that this killing
work, so poorly paid that he has hardly enough to provide for his family,
enriches his employer, which means that the latter is his ruthless exploiter,
his tireless oppressor, his enemy, his master, toward whom he owes no
other feeling but that o f hate and the rebelliousness o f a slave, to give place
much later, after he has vanquished the employer in the final struggle, to a
sense o f justice and a feeling of brotherhood toward the former employer,
as one who is now a free man.
The worker also must realizeand this is not difficult for him to under
standthat b y himself he is powerless against his master and that to prevent
his being utterly crushed by the latter, he must first unite with his fellow-
workers in the shop, and be loyal to them in all the struggles arising there
against the master
Internationalism Growing Out of Actual Experiences of Proletarian
Struggles. He also must know that merely a union of workers in the
same shop is not sufficient, that it is necessary that all the workers in the
same trade employed in the same locality should unite. Once he realizes
thisand if he is not exceedingly stupid, his daily experience will teach
him as much as thathe consciously becomes a devoted member o f his
corporative section. The latter already exists as a matter of fact, but it is
still devoid of international consciousness, it is still only a local fact. The
same experience, at this time collective, will soon overcome in the con
sciousness of the least intelligent worker the narrow limits of exclusively
local solidarity.
There comes a crisis, a strike. The workers in a certain locality belong
ing to the same trade make common cause, demanding from their employers
a wage increase or a reduction of hours of work. The employers do not
want to grant those demands; and since they cannot do without workers,
 306 THE P O LITICA L PH ILO S O P H Y O F B A K U N IN

they bring them from other localities or other provinces of the same
country or even from foreign countries. But in those countries the workers
work longer hours for less pay; and the employers there can sell their
products cheaper, successfully competing against countries where workers
working less earn more, and thus force the employers in the latter coun
tries to cut wages and increase the hours of their workers.
Hence it follows that in the long run the relatively tolerable position
of the workers in one country can be maintained only on condition that
it be more or less the same in other countries. A ll this repeats itself too
often to escape the attention of even the most simple-minded workers.
Then they come to realize that in order to protect themselves against the
ever-growing exploitation b y the employers, it is not enough to organize
solidarity on a local scale, but that it is necessary to unite the workers o f
the same trade not in one province onlyand not even in just one country
but in all countries, and above all in those countries which are inter
linked by commercial and industrial ties. W hen the workers come to
realize all this, then an organization will be formed, not only on a local
nor even on a national scale, but a truly international organization embrac
ing all the workers in a given trade.10
But this is not yet an organization of workers in general, it is only an
international organization of a single trade. And in order that non-educated
workers realize and recognize the actual solidarity existing among all the
trade unions of all the countries o f the world, it is necessary that the
other workers, intellectually more developed than the rest and having
some knowledge of economic science, should come to their aid. N ot that
the ordinary worker lacks daily experience in that respect, but the eco
nomic phenomena through which this solidarity manifests itself are exceed
ingly complex, so that their true meaning may be above the comprehension
o f the unenlightened worker.11
If we assume that international solidarity has been established in a single
trade while lacking in the others, it follows that in this organized industry
wages will be higher and hours o f work shorter than in all other industries.
And it having been proven that because of the competition of employers
and capitalists, the source o f real profits of both is the comparatively low
wages and the long hours imposed upon workers, it is clear that in the
industry in which the workers are organized along international lines, the
capitalists and the employers will earn less than in all the others, as a
result of which the capitalists will gradually transfer their capital and
credit, and the employers their exploiting activity, into the less organized
or altogether unorganized branches of industry.
This will necessarily lead to a failing off in the demand for labor in the
internationally organized industry, which will naturally result in a worsen
ing o f the situation o f the workers in that industry, who will have to
accept lower w a g in order not to starve. Hence it follows that conditions
 307 Founding of the Workers 1 International
o f labor cannot get worse or better in any particular industry without
immediately affecting the workers in other industries, and that workers
of all trades are interlinked with real and indissoluble ties of solidarity.12
Internationalism Issues from the Living Experiences of the Proletariat.
This solidarity has been proven by science as well as b y experience-science
for that matter being simply universal experience, clearly expressed, sys
tematically and properly explained. But solidarity manifests itself in the
workers world b y a mutual, profound, and passionate sympathy, which,
in a measure that economic factors and their political and social conse
quences keep on developing, factors telling more and more distressingly
upon the workers of all tradesgrows and becomes ever more of an intense
passion with the proletariat.
The workers in every trade and in every country,owing on one hand
to the material and moral support which in the course of their struggle
they find among workers in other trades and other countries, and on the
other hand, because of the condemnation and the systematic, hate-breathing
opposition with which they meet not only from their own employers but
also from employers in other, even very remote industries, and from the
bourgeoisie as a wholebecome fully aware o f their situation and the
principal conditions necessary to their emancipation. T h ey see that the
social world is in reality divided into three main categories: 1. The count
less millions of exploited workers; 2. A few hundred thousand second- or
third-rank exploiters; 3. A few thousand, or, at the most, a few tens o f
thousands o f the larger beasts of prey, big capitalists who have grown fat
on directly exploiting the second category and indirectly the first category,
pocketing at least half the profits obtained from the collective labor o f
humanity.18
As soon as the worker takes note of this special and abiding fact, he
must soon realize, backward though he may be in his development, that if
there is any means o f salvation for him, it must lie along the lines of
establishing and organizing the closest practical solidarity among the pro
letarians of the whole world, regardless of industries, or countries, in their
struggle against the exploiting bourgeoisie.
T h e Necessary Historic Premises of the International. Here then is
the ready framework of the International Workingmens Association. It
was given to us not by a theory bom in the head of one or several pro
found thinkers, but b y the actual development of economic facts, by the
hard trials to which those facts subject the working masses, and the reflec
tions, the thoughts, which they naturally engender in the minds of the
workers.
That the International Association could come into existence it was
necessary that the elements involved in its makingthe economic factors,
the experience, strivings, and thoughts of the proletariatshould already
have been developed strongly enough to form a solid base for it. It was
 308 THE PO LITICA L PH ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

necessary that there already should have been, in the midst of the prole
tariat, groups or associations of sufficiently advanced workers who, scat
tered throughout the world, could take upon themselves the initiative of
the great emancipatory movement of the workers. Following that comes,
of course, the personal initiative o f a few intelligent individuals fully
devoted to the cause of the people.14
It is not enough that the working masses come to realize that inter
national solidarity is the only means of their emancipation; it also is neces
sary that they have faith in the real efficacy and certainty of this means
of salvation, that they have faith in the possibility o f their impending
deliverance. This faith is a matter of temperament, collective disposition,
and mental state. Temperament is given to various peoples b y nature,
but it is subject to historic development. The collective disposition of
the proletarian is always a two-fold product: first, of all preceding events,
and then, especially, of his present economic and social situation.15

c h a p t e r 8 Economic
at its Widest

The Crystalization of a Class-Conscious International Union. Having

joined the trade union section o f the International, the newly converted
worker learns many things there. H e learns that the same solidarity exist
ing among all members of that section has likewise been established among
various sections or among all the trades in the same locality, and that the
wider organization o f this solidarity, embracing the workers of all trades,
became necessary because the employers in all industries act in concert in
order to drive down the standard of living of people who are forced to
live by selling their labor. The new member of the section is being edu
cated to the idea that this two-fold solidarity-first o f workers of one and
the same trade or of all crafts organized into various sections, is not con
fined to a single given locality, but, spreading far beyond the frontiers of
one country, encompasses the whole labor world, the proletariat of all
countries, powerfully organized for its own defense, for waging war upon
bourgeois exploitation.1
Having become a member of the International, he will learnmuch
more than he would be able to learn from verbal explanations that he
might get from his comradesfrom his personal experience, which now be
comes one and the same with the experiences of the other members o f the
 509 Economic Solidarity at Its Widest
section. The workers in his trade, losing patience with the greed of their
employers, declare a strike. But any strike is a harsh trial for workers who
live on wages. T h ey dont make anything, yet their families, their chil
dren, their own stomachs clamor for daily food. The strike fund which
they built up with so much difficulty is not sufficient to keep them up
for many weeks or even many days. T h ey are faced b y starvation or by
the prospect of having to submit to the harshest conditions imposed upon
them b y the greed or insolence of their employers. T h ey will have to
accept those conditions if help does not come.
But who will offer them this aid? O f course not the bourgeoisie, which
is leagued against the workers; help can come only from workers in other
trades and in other countries. And lo and behold, this help does arrive,
brought or sent by other sections of the International, and b y both local
and foreign sections. This ever-recurring experience shows more than
words can do the beneficent power of the international solidarity of the
labor world.2
No Ideological Conditions for Joining the Trade Union Section of
the International. The worker joining the trade union section of the
International is not asked any questions about his political or religious prin
ciples. He is asked only one thing: Does he wish to accept, along with
the benefits of the association, his share of the duties, which are quite
arduous at times? Does he intend to remain loyal to the section through
thick and thin, through all the vicissitudes o f the struggle, at first exclu
sively economic, and is he henceforth willing to conform all his acts to
the decisions o f the majority, in so far as those decisions have a direct or
indirect bearing upon this struggle against the employers? In a word, the
only solidarity which is offered to him as a benefit, and which at the same
time is inculcated into him as a duty, is economic solidarity in the widest
sense o f the word.
But once this solidarity is seriously accepted and established, it pro
duces everything else: the most sublime and the most subversive principles
of the International, the principles most destructive of religion, of the
juridical right o f the State, of divine and human authoritythe most
revolutionary ideas, in a word, being from the Socialist point of view the
necessary, natural development of this economic solidarity. And the
immense practical advantage o f the trade union sections over the central
sections consists exactly in that this development, and those principles,
are being proved to workers not b y theoretic reasoning but b y the living
and tragic experience of a struggle which is becoming wider, deeper, and
more terrible with every day, so that even the most ignorant, the least
prepared, the most submissive worker, ever driven on b y the very conse
quences o f the struggle, ends up b y avowing himself a revolutionist,
Anarchist, and atheist, very often being unaware as to the process whereby
he became such.8
 31O THE P O LITICA L PH ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

It is dear that only the trade union sections can give their members
this practical education and consequently only they can draw into the
organization of the International the masses of the proletariat, those masses
without whose practical co-operation, as I have said, the Social Revolution
will never be able to triumph.4
International Founded Not by Doctrinaires but by Socialist Workers.
If there were only central sections in the International, they would be like
souls without bodies, magnificent dreams impossible o f realization. Fortu
nately, however, the central sections, the branches of the main center
formed in London, were founded not b y bourgeois people, not b y profes
sional scientists, not b y men of prominence in political activity, but b y
Socialist workers. Workersand therein lies their great advantage over the
bourgeoisiebecause of their economic position, because they were spared
the doctrinaire, classical, idealistic, and metaphysical education which
poisons the minds of the bourgeois youth, have highly practical and
positive minds.
T h ey do not content themselves merely with ideas; they need facts,
and they believe ideas only in so far as they rest upon facts. This fortu
nate circumstance has enabled them to escape the two reefs upon which
thus far all bourgeois revolutionary attempts have run aground: academic
wranglings and platonic conspiracies. For that matter, the program of the
International Workingmens Association drawn up in London and definitely
accepted b y the Geneva Congress (1866), in proclaiming that the economic
emancipation of the working classes is the great aim to which all political
movement should be subordinated as a simple means and that all the
efforts hitherto made failed because of lack of solidarity among the workers
of various professions in each country and of a fraternal union among the
workers of various countries, showed clearly the only road which they
could and should follow.5
Proper Functioning of the Central Sections. Before all, the central
sections had to address themselves to the masses in the name o f economic
emancipation and not in the name of political revolution; and at first in
the name of their material interests in order to arrive at moral interests, the
latter being, in their capacity of collective interests, only the expression
and the logical consequence of the first. T h ey could not wait until the
masses came to them; they had to go out to the masses and approach them
at the point of their daily actualitiesthose actualities being their daily
labor specialized and divided into crafts. T h ey had to address themselves
to various trades already organized b y the exigencies of collective labor
into separate branches o f industry, in order to have them adhere to the
economic goal; in other words, in order to have them affiliate with the
International, retaining their autonomy and particular organizations. T h e
first thing they had to do, and which they succeeded in doing, was to
3ii Economic Solidarity at Its Widest
organize around every central section as many trade union sections as there
were different industries.
Thus the central sections, which in every country represent the soul
or mind of the International, took on a body, and became real and power
ful organizations. Many are o f the opinion that once this mission had been
fulfilled, the central sections should have been dissolved, leaving behind
only trade union organizations. That, In our opinion, is a big mistake.*
T h e Dynamic Forces o f the International: the Economic Straggle and
the New Social Philosophy. The great task which the International W ork
ingmens Association set itself, the task o f the ultimate and complete
emancipation o f workers from the yoke o f all the exploiters of their labor
of the employers, the owners of raw materials and tools of production,
in a word, o f all the representatives of capitalis not only an economic or
a purely material task. It is at the same time a social, philosophical, and
moral task; and it is likewise . . . a highly political task, but only in the
sense of the destruction of all politics through abolition of the States.
W e believe there is no need to prove that the economic emancipation of
the workers is impossible under the political, juridical, religious, and social
organization now prevailing in most of the civilized countries, and that
consequently, in order to attain and realize this task in full, it will be
necessary to destroy all existing institutions: the State, the Church, the
courts, the banks, the universities, the Administration, Arm y, and police,
which are in effect nothing but fortresses erected b y the privileged
classes against the proletariat. And it is not enough to destroy them in one
country; they must be destroyed in all countries. For ever since the
formation of modem States in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
there has been a growing solidarity among those institutionscutting across
the frontiers o f all countriesand a very strong international alliance.
Thus the task which the International Workingmens Association set
for itself is no less than the complete liquidation o f the existing political,
religious, juridical, and social world and its replacement b y a new economic,
philosophical, and social world. But such a gigantic enterprise could never
be realized if there were not at the service o f the International two equally
powerful, equally gigantic and complementary levers. The first o f these
is the ever growing intensity of needs, sufferings, and economic demands
o f the masses; the other is the new social philosophy, a highly realistic
popular philosophy, resting theoretically only upon real sciencethat is,
upon a science that is experimental and rational, and at the same rime
admits no other basis but that of human principles, (the expression o f the
eternal instincts o f the masses), the principles of equality, freedom, and
universal solidarity.7
W hy Political and Anti-Religious Principles Were Eliminated from
the International. W e believe that the founders o f the International acted
very wisely in eliminating from its program all political and religious
 3 IZ THE P O LITIC A L P H ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

questions. Beyond doubt they did not lack political opinions or clear-cut
anti-religious views, but they refrained from embodying them in this
program, their aim above all being to unite the working masses of the
civilized world into one common action. Necessarily they had to seek out
a common basis, a set of elementary principles upon which all real workers
that is, all those who were ruthlessly exploited and who were suffering,
might come together, irrespective o f the political and religious aberrations
which still hold sway over the minds of many o f those workers.
Had the founders of the International hoisted the banner of some
political or anti-religious school, far from uniting all the workers of Europe,
they would have divided them even more than at present. This would be
so because, aided b y the ignorance of the masses, the self-interested and
highly corrupting propaganda of the priests, governments, and bouigeois
political parties, including the reddest variety of them, have succeeded in
disseminating a great number of fallacies among the masses of the people,
and because unfortunately those blinded masses have often let themselves
be taken in b y all kinds of falsehoods which had no other aim but to make
the masses voluntarily and stupidly serve the interests of the privileged
classes, to their own detriment.
For that matter, the difference in the degree of the industrial, political,
mental, and moral development of the working masses of various countries
is still too great to have them united on the platform of one and the
same political and anti-religious program. T o make this a part of the
program of the International, and to make it an absolute condition for
those joining it, would be to aim at the organizing of a sea, not a universal
association; and it would spell the break-up of the International.
A True Peoples Politics. There is also another reason which led at
the outset to the elimination from the Internationals programin appear
ance at least, and only in appearanceof all political tendencies.
Until now, from the beginning of history, there has never been a true
politics of the people, and b y the people we mean the people of low
station in life, the rabble which sustains the whole world by its labor.
Until now it has been only the privileged classes that engaged in politics.
Those classes have made use of the physical prowess o f the people to
overthrow one another and take the place of the overthrown groups. The
people in turn have always taken sides in such struggles, vaguely hoping
that at least one o f these political revolutions, none o f which could get
along without the people, but none of which was waged for its sake,
would alleviate to some extent its poverty and its age-long slavery. And
it has always ended in deception. Even the great French Revolution
cheated the people. It destroyed the aristocratic nobility and put in its
place the bourgeoisie. The people are no longer called slaves or serfs, they
are proclaimed free men, possessing all their rights from birth, but their
slavery and poverty remain the same.
313 Economic Solidarity at Its Widest
And they will ever remain the same so long as the working masses will
serve as tools of bourgeois politics, whether this be called conservative,
liberal, progressive, or radical-even if it takes on the most revolutionary
coloring. For all bourgeois politics, o f any color or name whatever, can
have only one aim: to maintain the domination of the bourgeoisie and the
slavery of the proletariat.
T h e Elimination of Bourgeois Politics. W hat was the International
to do? First of all, it had to detach the working masses from any kind of
bourgeois politics, it had to eliminate from its program all the political
programs of the bourgeoisie. But at the time it was founded there was no
other politics in the whole world but the politics o f the Church, monarchy,
aristocracy, or bourgeoisie. The latter, especially the politics of the radical
bourgeoisie, was no doubt more liberal and humane than the others, but
they all were equally based upon the exploitation of the working masses
and had no other aim than to contest the monopolizing of this exploitation.
The International then had to begin by clearing the ground, and since
every form of politics, from the point o f view o f the emancipation o f
labor, was tainted by the touch of reactionary elements, the International
had to throw out of its midst all the known political systems in order to
found, upon the ruins of the bourgeois world, the true politics of the
workers, the politics o f the International Workingmens Association.
T h e Politics of the International. The International does not reject
politics of a general kind; it will be compelled to intervene in politics so
long as it is forced to struggle against the bourgeoisie. It rejects only
bourgeois politics and bourgeois religion, for one establishes the predatory
domination of the bourgeoisie and the other sanctifies and consecrates it.10
There is no other means of freeing the people economically and polit
ically, of giving them at the same time well-being and liberty, except to
abolish the State, all the States, and therewith once and for all destroy that
which until now has been called politicspolitics being precisely nothing
but the functioning, the manifestation, external and internal, of the action
of the State; that is, the art and science o f dominating and exploiting the
masses in favor of the privileged classes.
Wherein the Politics of the International Differs from that of Political
Parties. It is not true then to say that we completely ignore politics. W e
do not ignore it, for we definitely want to destroy it. And here we have
the essential point separating us from political parties and bourgeois
radical Socialists. Their politics consists in making use of, reforming, and
transforming the politics of the State, whereas our politics, the only kind
we admit, is the total abolition of the State, and of the politics which is its
necessary manifestation.
And only because we frankly want the abolition of this politics do we
believe that we have the right to call ourselves internationalists and revolu
tionary Socialists; for he who wants to pursue politics of a different kind,
 3 14 THE P O LITIC A L PH ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

who does not aim with us at the total abolition of politicshe must accept
the politics of the State, patriotic and bourgeois politics; and that is to
deny in the name of his great or small national State the human solidarity
of the nations beyond the pale of his particular State, as well as the
economic and social emancipation of the masses within the State.11
W hat type o f politics can there be? Apart from Mazzirfis systemthat
of the Republic-Statethere is only one other; the system of the Republic-
Commune, the Republic-Federation, Le., the system o f Anarchism. This
is the politics o f the Social Revolution, which aims at abolition of the State
and establishment of the economic, entirely free organization of the people
organization from bottom to top by means of federation.12
The founders o f the International Workingmens Association acted
wisely in refraining from placing political and philosophical principles as
the basis of this association, and in imparting to it at the beginning the
character of an otganization exclusively waging an economic struggle
against capital. T h ey did so because they were certain that once the
workers, drawing confidence from their right as well as from the numeri
cal power of their class, became involved in a battle of solidarity against
bourgeois exploitation, they would necessarily be led, in the natural course
of things and by the development of this struggle, soon to recognize the
political, social, and philosophical principles o f the International, principles
which in effect are the true expression of their point of departure and
their goal.13
If you start off by announcing first those tw o aims to ignorant workers,
burdened by their daily toil and demoralized and poisonedconsciously,
one might sayb y the perverse doctrines with which the governments,
acting in concert with all the privileged castes (priests, the nobility, and
the bourgeoisie) have been overwhelming the people, you will frighten
the workers. T h ey may repulse you without even suspecting that those
ideas are actually the most faithful expression of their own interests, that
those aims carry within themselves the possibility of realizing their most
cherished wishes, and that, on the contrary, the political and religious
prejudices in the name of which they have spurned those ideas are perhaps
the direct cause of the prolongation of their slavery and misery.
T h e Prejudices of the People and Those of the Educated Classes.
One has to distinguish between the prejudices of the people and those of
the privileged classes. The prejudices of the masses are based only upon
their ignorance, and run contrary to their own interests, whereas the
prejudices of the bourgeoisie are based precisely upon the interests of that
class, and they hold out against the disintegrating effect of bourgeois
science itself only through the strength of the collective egoism of the
bourgeoisie. The people want, but they do not know; the bourgeoisie
knows, but it does not want. W hich of the tw o is incurable? The bour
geoisie, without any doubt.14
315 Economic Solidarity at Its Widest
Workers Are Socialistic by Instinct. W e are referring to the great
mass of toilers, which, worn out by daily drudgery, is ignorant and miser
able. This mass, whatever its political and religious prejudices may be,
prejudices which, as a result o f the specific efforts of the bourgeoisie in
that direction, have become dominant in its consciousnessis uncon
sciously socialistic. Instinctively, b y virtue of its social position, it is
socialistic in a more serious and real fashion than all the bourgeois and
scientific Socialists put together. It is socialistic by virtue of ail the con
ditions of its material existence, by virtue of all the needs of its being, and
not through the dictates of the intellect as is the case with the bourgeois
Socialists. In actual life the needs of the first category exercise a much
greater power than the needs of the intellect, which are, as is the case
always and everywhere, the expression of the being, the reflection of its
successive developments, but never its principle.15

C H A P T E R 9 What the Workers Lack

W hat the workers lack is not a sense of reality, nor the necessity of
Socialist aspirations, but only Socialist thought. W hat every worker aspires
to deep down in his heart is a fully human existence with respect to his
material well-being and intellectual development, an existence based
upon justicethat is, upon equality and the liberty of everyone and all
in work. But this ideal obviously cannot be realized in the present political
and social world, which is based upon injustice and cynical exploitation of
the labor of the toiling masses. Hence every serious-minded worker is
necessarily a revolutionary Socialist, inasmuch as his emancipation can be
realized only through the overthrow of the system which now exists.
Either this organization of injustice, with all of its display o f iniquitous
lam and privileged institutions, must perish or the working masses will
remain condemned to perpetual slavery.1
This is the Socialist thought, the germs of which are found in the
instinct of every serious-minded worker. The Socialist aim then consists
in making every worker fully conscious of what he wants by awakening
in him an intelligence which corresponds to his instinct, for when the
intelligence of workers rises to the level of their instinct, their will crystal-
izes and their might becomes irresistible.
W hat is it that obstructs the more rapid development o f this salutary
intelligence among the working masses? Their ignorance, and to a great
 316 THE P O LITIC A L PH ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

extent the political and religious prejudices with which the classes interested
in keeping them ignorant try to becloud their consciousness and their
natural intelligence. H ow can this ignorance be dissipated, how can
these disastrous prejudices be destroyed? W ill it be achieved through
education and propaganda?2
Both o f course are excellent means. But in the situation of the working
masses in the present day they are insufficient. The isolated worker is
weighed down by his toil and his daily cares to such an extent that he
hardly has any time for education. And, for that matter, who will carry
on this propaganda? W ill it be some sincere Socialists who came from
bourgeois ranks? These no doubt are imbued with a generous will, but, to
begin with, they are too few in numbers to impart to their propaganda the
necessary sweep; and, in addition, because in view of their social position
they belong to a different world, they cannot exercise adequate influence
over the workers, but arouse in them more or less legitimate distrust.8
The emancipation of the workers should be the task of the workers
themselves, says the preamble o f our general statute. And it is a thousand
times right in saying so. This is the principal basis o f our great association.
But the world of workers is generally ignorant, it is almost innocent of
any theory. Consequently, there remains only one way, the way of a
practical emancipation. W hat is and what should be the method?
There is only one way: That is complete solidarity in the struggle o f
workers against the employers. It is the organization and federation of
workers resistance funds.4
The people are ready. T h ey suffer greatly and, what is more important,
they are beginning to understand that there is no need for that suffering.
T h ey are weary of keeping their eyes turned Heavenward and will not re
main patient for long on earth. In a word, the masseseven independently
of any propagandahave consciously turned to Socialism. The genera! and
profound sympathy aroused b y the Paris Commune among the proletariat
of all countries, serves as a proof of this. And the massesthey constitute
power, or, at least, a significant element of power. . . .5
Organization and Science. W hat do the masses lack to be able to
overthrow the prevailing social order, so detestable to them? T h ey lack
two things: organization and scienceprecisely the two things which con
stitute now, and always have constituted, the power of governments.
Above all, there must be organization, which is impossible without the
help o f science. Thanks to military organization, one battalion, a thousand
armed men, can hold in fear, and in reality they do that, a million people
who may be just as well armed but who are not organized. And thanks
to its bureaucratic organization, the State, with the aid of a few hundred
thousand officials, holds in subjection vast countries. Consequently, in
order to create a popular force capable of crushing the military and civil
power of the State, the proletariat must organize.
317 W hat the Workers Lack
Organization of the International. It is exactly this which the Inter
national Workingmens Association is doing now, and when it has
embraced or organized in its midst a half, a third, a fourth, or even a tenth
of the European proletariat, the States will cease to exist. T h e organization
of the International, having for its aim not the creation of States or new
forms of despotism, but the radical destruction of all kinds of domination,
must differ essentially from the State organization. Just as much as the
State is authoritarian, artificial, and violent, alien, and hostile to the natural
development of the peoples interests and instincts, so must the organization
of the International be free and natural, conforming in every respect to
those interests and instincts.
But what is this natural organization of the masses? It is an organization
based upon the various manifestations of their actual daily life, and upon
the various forms of labororganization b y trades or professions. Once all
the industries are represented in the International, including the various
forms of agricultural labor, its organization, the organization of the masses
of the people, will have been achieved.7
For it is indeed enough that one worker out of ten, seriously and with
full knowledge of the causey join the International, while the nine remain
ing outside of this organization become subject to its invisible influence,
and, when a critical moment arrives, they will follow, without even suspect
ing it, its directions, in so far as this is necessary for the salvation o f the
proletariat.
An Organized Minority But Not a State Government. It may be
objected that this manner of organizing the influence of the International
upon the masses of the people seems to tend to establish upon the ruins
of old authorities and existing governments, a new system of authority and
government. But to think so would be a great error.8
A government b y the International, if it is a government, or rather the
organized action of the International upon the masses, will ever differ from
the action of all the States in this essential characteristic, that it will always
be only the organization of actionnot official and not vested with any
authority or any political power, but altogether natural in characteron
the part of a more or less numerous group of individuals inspired b y a
general idea and tending toward the same goal, at first upon the opinion of
the masses and only then, by means of this opinion more or less modified
under the influence of the International, upon their will and their acts.
Whereas the governments, armed with authority and material power
which some claim to have received from God, while others claim it on
the strength of their alleged intellectual superiority or derive it from the
popular will expressed by means of the legerdemain called universal
suffrageimpose themselves forcibly upon the masses, force the latter to
obey their decrees without even making apparent efforts to ascertain the
sentiments of the masses, their needs, or their will.
 3 18 T H E P O LITIC A L P H ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

Between the power of the State and that of the International there is
the same difference which exists between the official action of the State
and the natural action of a club. The International does not have and
never shall have any other power but the great power of opinion and it
will never be anything else but the organization o f the natural action of
the individuals upon the masses. In contrast the State and all its institutions
the Church, the University, the courts, financial science, the police, and
the Army-*demand the passive obedience o f their subjects, no doubt
within the very elastic limits recognized and determined b y the lam , and
o f course without neglecting to corrupt as much as possible the opinion
and the will of those subjects, ignoring and often defying their explicit
wishes.
The International Versus the State. The State is authority, it is the
domination and the organized power of the possessing and so-called
enlightened classes upon the masses; the International spells the deliverance
o f the masses. The State, never seeking and never being able to seek any
thing but the enslavement of the masses, calls for their submission. The
International, seeking nothing else but complete liberty for the working
people, calls upon them to revolt. But in order to make this revolt power
ful and capable o f overthrowing the domination of the State and the
privileged classes, solely represented b y the State, the International has to
organize. In order to realize this aim, it employs only tw o means which,
far from being legal, (and legality in all countries is most o f the time
only the juridical consecration of privilege, that is, of injustice), are
legitimate from the point o f view of human right. These two means, as
we already have said, are the propaganda of the ideas o f the International
and the organizing of the natural influence of its members upon the
masses.10
Natural Influence Is No Infringement Upon Liberty. W hoever con
tends that activity organized in this fashion constitutes infringement upon
the freedom o f the masses, or an attempt to create a new authoritarian
power, is, in our opinion, a sophist or a fool. The worse it is for those who
are ignorant o f the natural and social law of human solidarity to the extent
o f imagining that absolute mutual independence of individuals and the
masses is possible or desirable. T o will that would be to will the very
annihilation o f society, for all social life is simply this incessant mutual
dependence o f individuals and masses. A ll individuals, even the strongest
and most intelligent o f them, are, at every instant of their lives, at once
producers and the products o f the will and action of the masses.
The liberty of every individual is the result, ever reproduced anew,
of the multitude of material, intellectual, and moral influences exercised
b y the individuals surrounding him, b y the society in which he was bom,
and in which he develops and dies. T o wish to escape this influence in
the name o f a transcendental, divine, absolutely egoistic, self-sufficient
3*9 What the Workers Lack
freedom is to condemn oneself to non-existence; to want to forego exercis
ing this freedom upon others, is to forego all social action, the very expres
sion o f ones thoughts and feelings. It means ending up in non-existence.
This independence, so highly extolled by the idealists and metaphysicians,
and individual freedom conceived in this sense, are non-being.11
In Nature as in human society, which is somewhat different from
Nature, every being lives only b y the higher principle of the most positive
intervention in the existence o f every other being. The extent o f this inter
vention varies only according to the nature o f the individual. Destruction
o f this mutual influence would mean death. And when w e demand
freedom for the masses, we do not pretend to do away with any o f the
natural influences exercised upon them b y individuals or groups o f indi
viduals. W e want abolition o f artificial, privileged, legal, official influences.
If the State and the Church were private institutions, we, to be sure,
would be their adversaries, yet we would not protest against their right
to exist. But we do protest against them because, doubtless being private
institutions in the sense that they exist in fact only for the particular
interest o f the privfleged classes, they nevertheless make use o f the col
lective power o f the masses organized for that purpose in order, officially
and violently, to force their authority upon the masses. If the International
became organized into a State, we, its convinced and impassioned partisans,
would become its most implacable enemies.12
T h e International Cannot Become a State. But the point is pre
cisely that the International cannot organize itself into a State. It cannot
do it because, in the first place, as its name indicates, it abolishes all fron
tiers; and there can be no State without frontiers, inasmuch as a universal
State, the dream o f conquering peoples and o f the greatest despots in the
world, has been proven b y historic experience impossible of realization.
W ho says the State necessarily says several Statesoppressors and exploit
ers within their boundaries, conquering or at least hostile to one another
beyond their frontiersand says the negation o f humanity. The universal
State, or the Peoples State, of which the German Communists speak, thus
can denote only one thing: the destruction of the State.13
The International Workingmens Association would have no meaning
if it did not aim at abolition o f the State. It organizes the working masses
of the people only for the purpose of this destruction. H ow does it
organize them? N ot from the top down, imposing upon the social
diversity produced b y the diversity o f labor, or imposing upon the natural
life o f the masses fictitious unity and order as is done b y the Statesbut,
on the contrary, from the bottom up, taking for its starting point the social
existence o f the masses, their real aspirations, and inducing them to group,
harmonize, and balance their forces in accordance with the natural
diversity of occupations and situations, and aiding them in it. Such is the
proper aim of the organization of trade union sections.
 3^0 THE P O LITIC A L PH ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

T h e Role of an Organized Minority During a Revolutionary Crisis.

W e already have said that in order to organize the masses, in order to
establish with them the salutary and solid influence o f the International
Workingmens Association, all that is necessary, strictly speaking, is that
one worker out of ten belonging to a given trade join the respective trade
union section. This can easily be understood. In moments of great political
and economic crises, when the instinct of the masses, sharpened by events
to the utmost point of keenness, lays itself open to all worth-while sug
gestions, at a time when these herds of human slaves, crushed and flattened
down but still unresigned to their position, rise up at last to throw off
their yoke, feeling, however, bewildered and powerless because o f being
completely disorganized-ten, twenty, or thirty well organized persons,
acting in concert and knowing where they are going and what they want,
can easily carry along a hundred, two hundred, or three hundred people,
or even more. W e saw an example of this in the Paris Commune. A serious
organization, just beginning its life during the siege, and far from a strong
or anything like a strong organization, was sufficient to create a formidable
power, a vast resistance potential.14
A n Adequate Class-Conscious Membership W ill Make the Interna
tional Invincible. W hat will happen then when the International Asso
ciation is organized much better, when it embraces in its ranks a much
greater number of sections, and especially a great number of agricultural
sections, every section having twice or three times its present membership?
W hat will happen then when every one of its members leams much better
than he knows now, the final aim and the true principles o f the Interna
tional as well as the means of realizing its triumph? The International then
will have become an invincible power.15
T h e Germs of a Despotic State. W e are convinced that if the Inter
national is split into two groupsone comprising the vast majority and
consisting of members whose only science reduces itself to a blind faith in
the theoretical and practical wisdom of its leaders, and the other consisting
only of a few scores of leadersthis organization, the mission of which is
to emancipate humanity, will itself be transformed into a sort of an oli~
garchic State, the worst o f all States. And what is more, this sagacious,
learned, and clever minority which, together with all the responsibility,
has assumed all the rights o f an autocratic government, which is the more
despotic in that its despotism is carefully hidden under the appearance of
obsequious respect for the will and decisions of a sovereign people, deci
sions ever suggested to this popular will b y the government itselfthis
minority, we say, obeying the necessities and conditions o f its privileged
position and suffering the fate of all governments, will become more and
more despotic, pernicious, and reactionary.16
The International Workingmens Association can become an instrument
o f the emancipation of humanity only when it has emancipated itself first,
32 1 What the Workers la c k
and that will happen only when it has ceased dividing into two groups
the majority as blind tools and the minority of learned savants who do all
the directingand when every member of the Association has become
permeated with the science, philosophy, and politics of Socialism.17
Free Criticism Essential to the Life of the International. The Inter
national is not a bourgeois and decrepit institution maintained only by
artificial means. It is young and has the future ahead of it, and therefore it
should be able to stand criticism. Only truth, candor, boldness in judge
ments and acts, and permanent self-exercised control can make it prosper.
Since the International is not an association which has to be organized from
the top down in the authoritarian way, b y the despotic rule of its com
mittees, and since it can be organized only from the bottom up, and only
in the popular way, b y a spontaneous and free movement o f the masses, it
is necessary that the masses know everything, that there be no govern
mental secrets so far as they are concerned, that they never accept fictions
or appearances for realities, that they have a clear idea o f the aims and
methods of their course, and above all that they always be clearly aware
of their real situation. Therefore all questions touching the International
should be discussed boldly and in the open, and its institutions and the real
state o f its organizations should not be treated as administrative secrets but
as abiding topics of a frank and public discussion.18
W ide Latitude of Programs Permitted W ithin the Framework o f
General Principles. As to the mode of organization of social life, of work
and collective property, the program of the International does not impose
anything absolute. The International has neither dogmas nor uniform the
ories. In this respect, as is the case with every living and free society, there
are many different theories stirring in its midst. But it accepts as its funda
mental basis the development and spontaneous organization of all the
associations and all the communes in complete autonomy, on condition that
the associations and the communes take as the basis of their organization
the aforementioned general principles which are obligatory upon all who
want to join the International. A s to the rest, the International counts upon
the salutary effect of the free circulation and advocacy of ideas and upon
identity and natural equilibrium of interests.18
T h e International and the Revolution. Is the International W ork
ingmens Association revolutionary in the sense of barricades and violent
overthrow of the political order now existing in Europe? No, it occupies
itself very little with that kind of politics, or rather, it does not occupy
itself with it at all. Bourgeois revolutionists are greatly vexed with the
International because o f its indifference to their aims and plans. . . .
The International then ignores completely all the daily political in
trigues, and up to the present time it has known only one kind o f politics
its propaganda, the expansion of its work, its organization. On the day
when the great majority of workers in America and Europe join the
 322 THE PO LITICA L P H ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

International and become well organized within it, there will be no longer
any need for a revolution; justice will have been achieved without violence.
And should there be broken heads, it will be only because the bourgeois
want it.
A few more years o f peaceful development, and the International will
have become a power against which it would be ludicrous to take up a
struggle. The bourgeoisie understand this only too well, and that is w h y
they try to provoke a struggle now. Today they still hope that they
have sufficient power to crush us, but they realize that tomorrow it will
be too late. Therefore they want to force the International to battle today.20
Are we going to let ourselves fall into this crude trap? N o, if we did,
we would greatly oblige the bourgeoisie but ruin our own cause for a
long time, W e have justice and right on our side, but our forces are still
inadequate for a real struggle. Let us then refrain from giving vent to
our indignation, let us remain firm, unshakable, and calm, however pro
voked we may be by the insolent bourgeois whippersnappers. Let us keep
on suffering, but let us not forget anything.
And while biding our time, let us continue, redouble, and expand ever
more widely our propaganda work. It is necessary that the workers of all
countries, the peasants of the villages as well as the factory workers of the
cities, know what the International Association wants. It is necessary that
they understand that apart from the triumph of the International there is
no other means of emancipation; that the International is the fatherland of
all the oppressed workers, their only refuge against exploitation b y the
bourgeoisie, the only force capable of overthrowing the insolent power
of the latter.21
Let us organize and enlarge our Association, but at the same time let us
not forget to strengthen it in order that our solidarity, which is our whole
power, may become more real from day to day. Let us have more and
more of this solidarity in study, in work, in public action, in life. Let us
rally our forces in common enterprises in order to render existence some
what more tolerable and less difficult; and let us form everywhere, and as
far as it is possible, consumers and producers co-operatives and mutual
credit societies, which, though unable to free us in any adequate and seri
ous manner, under present economic conditions, are important inasmuch
as they train the workers in the practice of managing the economy and
prepare the precious germs for the organization of the future.22
Propaganda and Economic Struggle. The International Workingmens
Association, true to its principle, will never extend its backing to a
political agitation which does not have for its immediate and direct aim
the complete economic emancipation of the 'worker, that is, the abolition
of the bourgeoisie as a class, separated in the economic sense from the great
mass of the populationnor will it support any revolution which does not
inscribe on its banner from the very first day: social liquidation.
323 What the Workers Lack
But revolutions are not improvised. They are not made arbitrarily by
individuals nor even b y the most powerful associations. T h ey come inde
pendently of all will and all conspiracies, and are always brought on by
the natural force o f circumstances. One can foresee them, one can antici
pate their approach, but one cannot accelerate their explosion. Convinced
of this truth, we ask ourselves the question: W hat policy should the
International pursue during this more or less protracted period, sep
arating us from the terrible social revolution which all o f us feel is in the
process of coming?23
W hile ignoring, as demanded by its statutes, all national and local
politics, the International imparts to the labor agitation of all countries an
exclusively economic character, setting as its aim: reduction of the hours
of labor and increase of wages; and as the means: the rallying of the mass
of workers into one association and the building up of resistance funds.
The International will keep on propagating its principles inasmuch as
these tenets, being the purest expression of the collective interests of the
workers o f the whole world, constitute the soul and the vital force o f the
Association. It will carry on this propaganda extensively, having no regard
for bourgeois susceptibilities, so that every worker, emerging from the
state o f mental and moral torpor in which he is being kept by the delib
erate efforts of the ruling class, comes to understand the situation, so that
he knows well what he should want and under what conditions he can
win for himself the rights of man.
The International will have to carry on this propaganda all the more
energetically and sincerely because in the International itself we often
meet with influences which, affecting disdain for those principles, try to
pass them off as useless theory, and strive to lead the workers back to the
political, economic, and religious catechism o f the bourgeoisie.
It will finally expand and become strongly organized, cutting athwart
the frontiers of all countries so that when the Revolution, brought about by
the natural force o f circumstances, breaks out, there will be a real force
at hand which knows what to do and by virtue thereof is capable of
taking the Revolution into its own hands and imparting to it a direction
salutary for the people: a serious international organization of workers
associations of all countries, capable of replacing the departing political
world of the States and the bourgeoisie.
W e conclude this faithful presentation of the policy o f the Interna
tional b y quoting the last paragraph of the preamble o f our general statutes:
The movement produced among the workers of the most industrious
countries of Europe, in giving rise to new hopes, gives us a solemn warning
not to relapse into the old errors. 24
 324 THE P O LITIC A L P H ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

c h a p t e r 10 Fatherland and Nationality

The State is not the Fatherland, it is the abstraction, the metaphysical,

mystical, political, juridical fiction of the Fatherland. The common people
of all countries deeply love their fatherland; but that is a natural, real love.
The patriotism of the people is not just an idea, it is a fact; but political
patriotism, love o f the State, is not the faithful expression o f that fact: it
is an expression distorted by means o f a false abstraction, always for the
benefit of an exploiting minority.
Fatherland and nationality are, like individuality, each a natural and
social fact, physiological and historical at the same time; neither o f them
is a principle. O nly that can be called a human principle which is universal
and common to all men; and nationality separates men, therefore it is not
a principle. W hat is a principle is the respect which everyone should have
for natural facts, real or social. Nationality, like individuality, is one of
those facts. Therefore w e should respect it. T o violate it is to commit a
crime, and, to speak the language of Mazzini, it becomes a sacred principle
each time it is menaced and violated. And that is w hy I feel myself always
sincerely the patriot of all oppressed fatherlands.1
Th e Essence of Nationality. A fatherland represents the incontestable
and sacred right of every man, of every human group, association, com
mune, region, and nation to live, to feel, to think, to want, and to act in
its own wayand this manner of living and feeling is always the incon
testable result of a long historic development.2
Therefore we bow before tradition, before history; or rather, we recog
nize them, not because they appear to us as abstract barriers raised meta
physically, juridically, and politically by the learned interpreters and pro
fessors of the past, but only because they have actually passed into the
flesh and blood, into the real thoughts and the will of actual populations.
W e are told that such and such a regionthe canton of Tessin [in Switzer
land], for instanceevidently belongs to the Italian family: it has language,
morals, and everything in common with the populace o f Lombardy, and
therefore it should become a part of the united Italian State.
Our answer is that this is an utterly false conclusion. If there really
exists a substantial identity between the Tessin canton and Lombardy, there
is no doubt that Tessin will spontaneously join Lombardy. If it does not
do it, if it does not feel the slightest desire for it, that will simply go to
prove that real historywhich continues from generation to generation in
the real life of the people of the Tessin canton, the history which produced
its reluctance to join Lombardyis something altogether different from
the history written in books.*
325 Fatherland and Nationality
On the other hand, it should be noted that the real history o f individuals,
as well as that o f peoples, does not proceed only by positive development
but very often b y the negation of the past and revolt against it; and this
is the right o f Ufe, the inalienable right of the present generation, the
guarantee of their liberty.4
Nationality and Universal Solidarity. There is nothing more absurd
and at the same time more harmful, more deadly, for the people than to
uphold the fictitious principle o f nationality as the idea! of all the peoples
aspirations. Nationality is not a universal human principle; it is a historic,
local fact which, like all real and harmless facts, has the right to claim
general acceptance. Every people and the smallest folk-unit has its own
character, its own specific mode o f existence, its own way of speaking,
feeling, thinking, and acting; and it is this idiosyncrasy that constitutes the
essence of nationality, which is the result of the whole historic life and
the sum total of the living conditions of that people.8
Every people, like every person, is involuntarily that which it is and
therefore has a right to be itself. Therein consists the so-called national
rights. But if a certain people or person exists in fact in a determinate form,
it does not follow that it or he has a right to uphold nationality in one
case and individuality in the other as specific principles, and that they
have to keep on forever fussing over them. On the contrary, the less they
think o f themselves and the more they become imbued with universal
human values, the more vitalized they become, the more charged with
meaning nationality becomes in the one instance, and individuality in
the other.
T h e Historic Responsibility of Every Nation. The dignity of every
nation, like that o f every individual, should consist mainly in each accepting
full responsibility for its acts, without seeking to shift it to others. Are
they not very foolishall these lamentations o f a big boy complaining with
tears in his eyes that someone has corrupted him, and put him on the evil
path? And what is unbecoming in the case of a boy is certainly out of
place in the case of a nation, whose very feeling of self-respect should pre
clude any attempts to shift the blame for its own mistakes upon others.7
Patriotism and Universal Justice. Every one o f us should rise above
the narrow, petty patriotism to which ones own country is the center o f
the world, and which deems itself great in so far as it makes itself feared
by its neighbors. W e should place human, universal justice above all
national interests. And we should once and for all time abandon the false
principle of nationality, invented of late b y the despots o f France, Russia,
and Prussia for the purpose o f crushing the sovereign principle o f liberty.
Nationality is not a principle; it is a legitimate fact, just as individuality is.
Every nationality, great or small, has the incontestable right to be itself,
to live according to its own nature. This right is simply the corollary of
the general principle of freedom.
 326 THE P O LITIC A L PH ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

Everyone who sincerely wishes peace and international justice, should

once and for all renounce what is called the glory, the might, and the
greatness of the Fatherland, should renounce all egoistic and vain interests
of patriotism.8

c h a p t e r ii Women, Marriage, and Family

Equal Rights for Women. As much as any one else I am a partisan

of the complete emancipation o f women and their social equality with
men.1
The expression social equality with men implies that we demand,
along with freedom, equal rights and duties for men and women2that is,
equalization of the rights of women, political as well as social and economic
rights, with those of men; consequently, w e want the abolition of family
and marriage law, and o f the ecclesiastic as well as the civil law, indissolubly
bound up with the right o f inheritance.9
Abolition of the Juridical Family. In accepting the Anarchist rev
olutionary program, which alone, in our opinion, offers conditions for a
real and complete emancipation of the common people, and convinced
that the existence o f the State in any form whatever is incompatible with
the freedom of the proletariat, and that it does not permit the international
fraternal union of nations, we therefore put forth the demand for the
abolition of all States.
Abolition of States and of the juridical right will necessarily entail the
abolition of personal inheritable property and the juridical family based
upon this property, since both do not admit of human justice.4
Free Marriage Union. [Against marriage b y compulsion we have
raised the banner o f the free nation.] W e are convinced that in abolishing
religious, civil, and juridical marriage, we restore life, reality, and morality
to natural marriage based solely upon human respect and the freedom of
two persons; a man and woman who love each other. W e are convinced
that in recognizing the freedom of either party to the marriage to part
from the other whenever he or she wishes to, without having to ask any
ones permission for itand that likewise in denying the necessity of need
ing any permission to unite in marriage and rejecting in general the
interference of any authority with that union, we make them more closely
united to each other. And we are equally convinced that when the accursed
State power is no longer with us to force individuals, associations, com
munes, provinces, and regions to live together against their will, all these
will constitute a much closer union, a much more living unity, more real
327 W omen , Marriage} and Family
and more powerful than that which was forced upon them b y the crushing
power of the State.6
Th e Upbringing of Children. W ith the abolition of marriage there
comes to the fore the question of the upbringing o f children. Their up
keep from the time o f their mothers pregnancy until their maturity, their
training and education, equal for allindustrial and intellectual training
combining preparation for both manual and mental labormust be mainly
the concern o f the free society.8
Society and Children. Children do not constitute anyones property:
they are neither the property of the parents nor even o f society. T h ey
belong only to their own future freedom. But in children this freedom is
not yet real; it is only potential. For real freedom,that is, the full aware
ness and the realization thereof in every individual, pre-eminently based
upon a feeling of ones dignity and upon the genuine respect for someone
elses freedom and dignity, i.e., upon justicesuch freedom can develop in
children only through the rational development o f their minds, character,
and will.
Hence it follows that society, the whole future o f which depends upon
adequate education and upbringing o f children, and which therefore has
not only the right but also the duty to watch over them, is the sole guardian
of the children o f both sexes. And since, as a result o f the forthcoming
abolition of the right of inheritance, society is to become the only heir, it
will then deem as one of its first duties the furnishing of all the necessary
means for the maintenance, upbringing, and education of children of both
sexes, irrespective of their origin or of their parents.
Th e rights of the parents shall be confined to loving their children and
exercising over them the only authority compatible with that love, in so
far as this authority does not run counter to their morality, their mental
development, or their future freedom. Marriage, in the sense of being a
civil and a political act, like any intervention of society in questions of
love, is bound to disappear. The children will be entrustednaturally and
not by rightto the mother, her prerogative under rational supervision of
society.7

c h a p t e r 12 Upbringing and Education

Integral, Equal Education an Indispensable Condition of Workers

Emancipation. The first demand o f the International is an integral, equal
education for all; the first thing the Paris Commune thought o f in the
 328 THE P O LITIC A L PH ILO S O P H Y O F B A K U N IN

midst of the terrible struggle of which you know, was to establish excel
lent elementary schools for boys and girls, conducted upon humanitarian
principles and without priests.1
Can the emancipation o f the workers be complete so long as the educa
tion received b y the masses is inferior to that given to the bourgeoisie, or
so long as there is in general any class whatever, large or small in numbers,
enjoying by virtue of birth the privileges of superior and more thorough
going instruction? . . .
Is it not evident that out of two persons endowed with a nearly equal
natural intelligence, the one who knows more, whose mind has been
broadened to a greater extent b y science and who, having a better under
standing of the interlinking system of natural and social facts, or what one
calls natural and social laws, will grasp more readily and in a broader
light the character o f the environment in which he finds himself? And is
it not evident also that that person will feel more free, and that in prac
tice he will prove the cleverer and stronger of the two?
It stands to reason that the one who knows more will dominate the one
who knows less. And if there were, to begin with, only this difference in
upbringing and education between two classes, it would in itself produce
in a comparatively short time all the other differences, and human society
would relapse into its present state; that is, it would be split up again into
a mass of slaves and a small number o f masters, the first working for the
latter as they do now in existing society.2
One understands then w h y bourgeois Socialists demand only a little
more education for the people, only a little more than what the people
are getting now, and w h y we, the democratic Socialists, demand for the
people a full integral education, as complete as the present state of the
intellectual development o f society will permit, so that there will be no
class standing above the working masses b y virtue of its superior educa
tion and being in a position, on account o f it, to dominate and exploit
the workers.
So long as there exist two or several degrees of education for various
layers of society, there inevitably will be classes in existence; that is, eco
nomic and political privileges for a small number o f fortunate people, and
poverty and slavery for a vast number of others.4
Education and Labor. As members of the International Association
we want equality, and because w e want that w e must likewise want integral
education, equal for all. But w e are asked: If everyone is going to be edu
cated, who will want to work? Our answer is simple: Everyone shall work,
and everyone shall be educated. One objection to that, frequently raised,
is that this mixing of mental and mechanical labor will only be detrimental
to both; that manual workers will make very poor scientists and scientists
will always remain very poor manual workers.
Yes, that is true in existing society, wherein both manual and mental
329 Upbringing and Education
labor arc equally distorted by the altogether artificial isolation to which
both are condemned. But we are convinced that in a living and integral
man each o f these activitiesmuscular and nervousshould be equally
developed, and that, far from harming each other, those two activities are
bound to support, enlarge, and reinforce each other. Thus the knowledge
of the savant will become more fruitful, useful, and broader in scope when
he is no more a stranger to physical work, and the labor of the educated
worker will be more intelligently done and consequently more productive
than that of an ignorant one. Hence it follows that it is to the interest
of both labor and science that there be no more workers nor scientists but
only men.8
Science and Technique at the Disposal of Labor. Men who by virtue
of their intellectual superiority are now exclusively preoccupied with the
world of science and who, once established in that world, and yielding to
the exigencies o f a completely bourgeois position, turn ail their inven
tions to the exclusive use of the privileged class, of which they themselves
are a part,all these men, once they make common came with the rest of
mankind, once they become fellow-workers with the common people, not
only in imagination and in words, but in fact, and b y actual work, will
necessarily place their discoveries and applications o f science at the disposal
of society, for the benefit of everyone, and, in the first place, for the
alleviation and ennoblement of labor, the only legitimate and real basis
of human society.8
Science in the Transitional Period. It is possible and even probable
that in the more or less prolonged transitional period, which will naturally
follow in the wake of a great social crisis, sciences of the highest standing
will sink to a level much below that held b y each at present. . . . But does
this temporary eclipse of the higher sciences really mean a great misfor
tune? W hat science loses in sublime loftiness, w ill it not regain by broad
ening its base? N o doubt at first there will be fewer illustrious scientists,
but there will be a greatly reduced number o f ignorant people.
There will be no more of the gifted few who reach for the skies, but
in their place there will be millions who are now debased and crushed by
the conditions of their lives, and who then will bestride the world like
free and proud men. There will be no demi-gods, but neither will there
be slaves. The demi-gods and the slaves will become humanized; the first
will step down a little, and the others will rise a great deal. There will be
no place then for deification nor for contempt. All men will unite and march
with fresh vigor toward new conquests in science as well as in fife.
Equal Education and the Differential of Individual Abilities. But
here another question arises: Are all individuals equally capable of rising
to the same levels of education? Let us imagine a society organized upon
the principles of utmost equality, and wherein all the children from their
birth will have the same start in fife, in economic, social, and political
 330 THE PO LITIC A L PH ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

respectsthat is, they will have the same maintenance, the same education,
the same upbringing. W ill there not be among those thousands of little
individuals infinite differences in point of energy, natural tendencies, and
aptitudes?
There we have one of the strong arguments o f our adversaries, the
bourgeois pure and simple and the bourgeois Socialists, who deem it
irrefutable.7
Only under conditions of full equality can individual freedomnot
privileged but human freedomand the real capacities of individuals obtain
their complete development. W hen equality has become the starting point
in the lives o f all people upon the earth, only thensafeguarding, however,
the supreme rights of human solidarity, which is and will ever remain the
greatest producer of ail social values: material goods and the riches o f the
human mindonly then can one say that every individual is the product
of his own efforts. From which we conclude that in order that individual
capacities prosper in full, in order that they be not hindered in bearing
full fruit, it is necessary to do away with all individual privilegeso f politi
cal as well as economic naturethat is, it is necessary to abolish all classes.
It is necessary to do away with individual property and the right o f
inheritance, it is necessary to attain the economic, political, and social
triumph of equality.8
But once equality has triumphed and become established, will there
be no difference in the capacities and degrees of energy possessed b y vari
ous individuals? Such differences will continue to exist, not to the same
extent, perhaps, as they now exist, but no doubt they will not altogether
disappear. It is a truth, which has passed into a proverb, that there are no
two leaves alike on one and the same tree. And this holds true even to a
greater extent in regard to human beings, the latter being so much more
complex than the leaves. But this diversity, far from being an evil, on the
contrary, as it was well observed by the German philosopher Feuerbach,
constitutes the wealth of humanity. Thanks to this diversity, humanity is
a collective unit in which every individual member completes all the
others and himself needs all the restso that this infinite diversity of human
individuals is the very cause, the principal basis o f their solidarity, consti
tuting an all-powerful argument in favor o f equality.8
Natural Differences Among Individuals not Denied. But then, we
may be asked, how can one explain the fact that education, being almost
identical, in appearance at least, often yields widely diverse results in point
o f development o f character, heart, and mind? And to begin with, do not
individual natures themselves differ at birth? This natural and innate differ
ence, small though it may be, is nevertheless positive and real: difference in
temperament, in vital energy, in the predominance of one sense or o f a
group of organic functions over others, difference in intensity of sense im
pressions and natural capacities.
33* Upbringing and Education
W e have tried to prove that vices as well as moral qualitiesfacts of
individual and social consciousnesscannot be physically inherited, and that
man cannot be physiologically pre-determined toward evil or irrevocably
rendered incapable of good. But we never meant to deny that individual
natures differ widely among themselves, or that some of them are endowed
to a greater extent than others for a large human development. However,
we believe that these natural differences are much exaggerated, and that
most of them should be attributed not to Nature but to educational differ
ences prevailing in existing society.10
T h e Great M ajority of Differences in Ability Are Due to Differences
in Education. The power to think, as well as the power of will, is con
ditioned in every individual by his organism and upbringing. H ow
matters will stand in this respect a few centuries hence, after full social
equality has been established upon the earth, we do not know. But it
cannot be denied now that intelligence and stupidity in men are to some
extent a matter of differences in their organisms. Equal brain power does
not exist in present-day humanity. By way of consolation one may observe
that the number of inordinately intelligent men, or those endowed with
real genius, as well as the number of men egregiously stupid by nature,
idiots, is quite small compared with the average run of humanity. The
vast majority consists of persons endowed with average moderate and
almost equal capacities, which do, however, differ widely in kind. And it
is the majority that matters now and not the minority.
The major part of the differences now existing with respect to mental
capacities are not innate but owe their origin to upbringing. Power of
thought develops by exercise in thinking and by proper, expeditious guid
ance of the infant and adolescent brain in the great task of assimilating
rational knowledge.11
In order to solve this question it is necessary that the two sciences
which are called upon to solve itphysiological psychology, or the science
of the brain, and pedagogy, or the science of upbringing or of the social
development of the brainshould emerge from the infantile state in which
both still find themselves. But once the physiological differences of indi
viduals, of whatever degree they may be, are admitted, it clearly follows
that a system of education, though excellent in itself as an abstract system,
may be good for one and bad for the other.
Equal and Humanitarian Education W ill Tend to Do Away with
Many of the Present Differences. In order to be perfect, education must
become more individualized than it is today, individualized in the sense of
freedom, and based upon respect for freedom, even among children. Such
an education should have for its object not merely the mechanical training
of character, mind, and affections, but awakening them to an independent
and free activity. It should have no other aim than the development of
freedom, no other cult (or rather no other morality, no other object of
 332 THE P O LITIC A L PH ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

respect) than the liberty o f each and all; simple justice, not juridical but
human; simple reason, neither theological nor metaphysical, but scientific;
and labor, mental and physical, as the first and the obligatory basis o f all
dignity, freedom, and right. Such an education, widely diffused and em
bracing all men and women, an education promoted under economic and
social conditions based upon strict justice, would be instrumental in doing
away with many so-called natural differences.12
Society Owes an Integral Education to All. It follows that society,
without taking into consideration the real or fictitious differences in indi
vidual propensities and capacities and not having the means to determine,
nor the right to decree, the future career of the young, owes to all
children, without any exception, an absolutely equal education and
upbringing.1*
Education o f all degrees should be equal for all and therefore it should
be an integral education, that is, it .should prepare every child o f either
sex for a life o f thought as well as of work, so that all will become equally
complete and integral individuals.
The positivist philosophy, having dethroned in the minds of men the
religious fables and the day-dreams of metaphysics, enables us to catch a
glimpse o f the character o f scientific education in the future. It will have
as its basis the study of Nature, and sociology as its completion. The ideal,
ceasing to be the tyrant and distorter of life, as is ever the case in all the
metaphysical and religious systems, will henceforth be only the ultimate
and most beautiful expression of the real world. Ceasing to be a dream, it
will itself become a reality.14
Since no mind, powerful as it may be, is capable of embracing in their
particular concreteness all the sciences, and on the other hand, since a
general knowledge of all sciences is absolutely necessary for the complete
development of the mind, instruction divides naturally into two parts: the
general one, giving the principal elements of all sciences, with no exception,
as well as the knowledge (not superficial but real) of their totality; and
the special part, necessarily divided into several groups or faculties, every
one of which embraces a certain number of mutually complementary
sciences.18
The first, the general part, will be obligatory for all children; it will
constitute, if we may thus express ourselves, the humane education of their
minds, completely replacing metaphysics and theology and at the same
time developing the children to a point where they may knowingly choose,
when they reach the age of adolescence, the special faculty of sciences best
suited to their individual tastes and aptitudes.10
In the system of integral education, along with scientific or theoretical
education, it is essential that there be industrial or practical education. Only
in this way will it be possible to develop the integral man of the future:
the worker who understands what he is doing.
333 Upbringing and Education
Industrial teaching, paralleling scientific education, will be divided
into two parts: general teaching, giving the children a general idea of, and
the first practical knowledge of, all industries, as well as the idea o f
their totality constituting the material aspect o f civilization, the totality of
human labor; and the special part divided into groups of industries form
ing special closely interlinked units.
General teaching should prepare adolescents to choose freely the special
group of industries, and among them that branch for which they have a
particular taste. Having entered the second phase of industrial education,
the young people will serve their first apprenticeship in real work under
the guidance o f their teachers.
Alongside of scientific and industrial education there will necessarily be
a practical education, or rather a series of experiments, in morality, not
divine but human morality. Divine morality is based upon two immoral
principles, respect for authority and contempt for humanity; but human
morality, on the contrary, is based upon contempt for authority and respect
for freedom and humanity. Divine morality considers work degradation
and punishment; but human morality sees in it the supreme condition o f
human happiness and human dignity. Divine morality, b y its own logic,
leads to a politics which recognizes only the right of those who, thanks to
their privileged economic position, can live without working. Human
morality grants those rights only to those who live b y working; it recog
nizes that b y work alone does man become a man.
The education of children, taking authority as its starting point, must
gradually attain the fullest liberty,17
Rational Education, Let us agree that, in the real meaning of the
word, schools, in a normal society based upon equality and on respect for
human freedom, will exist only for children and not for adults; and in
order that they may become schools o f emancipation and not of enslave
ment, it will be necessary to eliminate, in the first place, this fiction of
God, the eternal and absolute enslaver. Education of children and their
upbringing must be founded wholly upon the scientific development of
reason and not that of faith; upon the development of personal dignity and
independence, not upon piety and obedience; on the cult of truth and
justice at any cost; and above all, upon respect for humanity, which must
replace in everything the divine cult.
From Authority to Complete Liberty. The principle o f authority in
the education of children constitutes the natural starting point: it is legiti
mate and necessary when applied to those o f a tender age, at a time when
their intelligence is still not in any w ay developed. But inasmuch as the
development of everything, and consequently of education, implies the
gradual negation of the point of departure, this principle must gradually
diminish in the same measure in which instruction and education advance,
giving place to increasing liberty.
 334 T H E P O LIT IC A L P H ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

A ll rational education is at bottom nothing but the progressive immola

tion of authority for the benefit of freedom, the final aim of education
necessarily being the development of free men imbued with a feeling of
respect and love for the liberty o f others. Thus the first day of school life,
if the school takes pupils at an age when they have just begun to prattle,
must be that of the greatest authority and almost total absence o f liberty;
but its last day must be that o f the greatest liberty and the absolute aboli
tion o f every vestige of the animal or divine principle of authority.18
T h e Training of W ill. It is to be observed that lax system in up
bringing, now advocated b y some on the pretext of freedom and consisting
in continuous yielding to ail the whims and caprices o f the child, contrib
utes little toward the development of a strong will. On the contrary, the
will develops b y having it exercised; at first, of course, through compul
sory exercises, in the process of checking instinctive drives and cravings,
and with this accumulation and concentration o f inner power in the child
there gradually comes concentration of attention, memory, and independent
thought. A man who is incapable of self-control, o f repressing cravings, of
holding in check involuntary and harmful reflexes and actions, of resisting
inward and outward pressurein a word, one who lacks will poweris
just an ordinary weakling.19
Extra-Mural Education.The principle of authority, applied to men who
have come to age or grown beyond maturity, becomes a monstrosity, a
flagrant denial o f humanity, a source o f slavery and intellectual and moral
depravity. Unfortunately, paternal governments have left the masses to
stagnate in an ignorance so profound that it will be necessary to estab
lish schools not only for the peoples children, but also for the people
themselves.
But these schools should be free from even the slightest application or
manifestation of the principle of authority. T h ey will not be schools in
the accepted meaning, but popular academies, in which neither pupils nor
masters will be known, but where the people will come freely to get, if
they find it necessary, free instruction, and in which, rich in experience,
they will teach many things to their professors who shall bring them the
knowledge that they lack. This, then, will be a sort of intellectual fraternity
between educated youth and the people.20
T h e real school for the people and for all grown men is life. The only
great and all-powerful authority, at once natural and rational, the only
one which we may respect, will be that of the collective and public spirit
of a society founded on equality and solidarity as well as on liberty and
the mutual respect o f all o f its members.21
Socialist Education Is Impossible in Existing Society. Three things are
necessary in order that men may become moral (that is, complete men in
the true sense of the word): birth under hygienic conditions; a rational
and integral education accompanied b y an upbringing based upon respect
335 Upbringing and Education
for work, reason, equality, and liberty; and a social environment wherein
the human individual, enjoying his full liberty, will be equal, both in fact
and b y right, to all others.
Does such an environment exist? It does not. So it follows that it must
be created. If it were even possible to found in the existing environment
schools which would give their pupils instruction and education as perfect
as we can imagine, would those schools succeed in developing just, free,
and moral men? No, they would not, for upon leaving school the gradu
ates would find themselves in a social environment governed by altogether
contrary principles, and since society is always stronger than individuals,
it would soon come to dominate them, and it would demoralize them. For
social life embraces everything, pervading schools as well as the life of
the families and of all individuals comprised in it.22
Public education, not fictitious but real education, can exist only in a
truly equalitarian society. . . . And since life itself and the influence of
social environment are far more powerful educational factors than the
teaching of all the licensed professors o f the duty of sacrifice, and of all
the virtuesthen how can education ever be the common possession o f all
in a society wherein the social situation of individuals as well as of families
differs so widely and is so unequal?23
Social Environment Shapes the Mentality of Teachers. Educators live
and work in a certain society, and they are permeated throughout their
whole being, and in the smallest particulars of their lifemostly without
even being aware of itby the convictions, prejudices, passions, and habits
of that society. T h ey transmit all those influences to the children in their
charge, and since because of the natural tendency of man to exert pressure
against those weaker than himself, most educators are oppressors and
despots with respect to childrenand likewise since the salutary spirit of
contrariness, guarantee of freedom and of ail progress, awakens within
humans almost at infancy,children and adolescents usually hate their edu
cators, distrust them, and, protesting against their routine and their social
teachings, the younger generation becomes capable of accepting or creating
new things.
Here is one of the principal reasons w hy adolescents, while still attend
ing school, and not yet taking a direct and constructive part in social life,
are capable, to a greater extent than adults, of espousing a new truth. But
no sooner do they leave school, no sooner do they come to take a definite
place in society and become permeated with the habits, interests, and, so
to speak, the logic of a certain more or less privileged position, no sooner
does that happen than theyor the majority o f themtake their places
alongside the older generation against which they had rebelled, as the
slaves of society, becoming in turn the oppressors of the next younger
generation because o f social prejudices.
Social environment, and social opinion, which always expresses the ma-
 33<5 T H E PO LITICA L P H ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

terial and political interests of that environment, weigh down heavily upon
free thought, and it takes a great deal of power o f thought and even more
so of anti-social interest and passion to withstand that heavy oppression.24
A Socialist Attitude Can be Developed in Children only in a Socialist
Society. The teachers, professors, and parents are all members o f this
society, are ail stultified or demoralized by it. So how can they give to
their pupils that which they themselves lack? Morality can be effectively
preached only by example, and since Socialist morality is altogether con
trary to existing morality, the teachers who are necessarily dominated to a
greater or smaller extent b y the latter, will act in the presence o f the
pupils in a manner w holly contrary to what they preach. Consequently,
Socialist education is impossible in the existing schools as well as in present-
day families.
But integral education is equally impossible under existing conditions.
The bourgeois have not the slightest desire that their children should
become workers, and workers are deprived o f the means necessary to give
their offspring a scientific education.
I am very much amused b y those good bourgeois Socialists who are
always telling us: Let us first educate the people and emancipate them.
W e say, on the contrary: Let them first emancipate themselves and then
they will look after their own education.
W ho will teach the people? You? But you do not teach them, you
poison them by trying to inculcate all the religious, historical, political,
juridical, and economic prejudices which guarantee your existence, but
which at the same time destroy their intelligence, take the mettle out o f
their legitimate indignation, and debilitate their will. You let the people
be crushed b y their daily work and b y their poverty and then you tell
them; Study, get educated. W e should like to see you, with your ,chil
dren, take to study after thirteen, fourteen, or sixteen hours of brutalizing
labor, with poverty and insecurity next day as your whole recompense.25
N o, gentlemen, notwithstanding our respect for the great question o f
integral education, we declare that right now this is not the most impor
tant question confronting the people. The first question for the people is
that o f economic emancipation, which necessarily and immediately begets
political emancipation, and only following that comes intellectual and
moral emancipation of the people.25
Education for the People Must Go Hand-in-Hand with Improvement
of Economic Conditions. Schools for the people are an excellent thing
indeed; and yet one has to ask oneself whether the average man o f the
people, who leads a precarious hand-to-mouth existence, who lacks educa
tion and leisure and is forced to work himself to exhaustion in order to
keep up his familywhether such a worker can have the wish, the idea, or
the opportunity to send his children to school and maintain them during
the study period? W ill he not need them, need the help of their weak,
337 Upbringing and Education
childish hands, their labor in order to support the family? It is a distinct
sacrifice on his part when he lets them have a year or two o f schooling,
enough to learn the three Rs and have their hearts and minds poisoned
with the Christian catechism, of which there is an inordinate abundance in
the schools o f all countries. W ill this meager education ever be able to
raise the working masses to the level o f bourgeois education? W ill the
gulf ever be bridged?27
It is evident that this important question o f the education and upbring
ing of the people depends upon the solution of the much more difficult
problem o f radical reorganization of the existing economic conditions o f
the working masses. Elevate those conditions, give back to labor what
belongs to it b y justice, and you thereby enable the workers to acquire
knowledge, prosperity, leisure, and then, you may be sure, they will have
created a broader, healthier, and loftier civilization than yours.28
Does it follow that w e must eliminate all education and abolish all
schools? Far from it! Education must be spread among the masses unspar
ingly, transforming all the churches, all those temples dedicated to the
glory of God and to the slavery of men, into so many schools o f human
emancipation.28
That is w h y we fully subscribe to the resolution adopted by the Con
gress of Brussels in 1867:
Recognizing that for the moment it is impossible to organize a rational
system of education, the Congress urges its various sections to organize
study courses which would follow a program o f scientific, professional,
and industrial education, that is, a program of integral instruction, in order
to remedy as much as possible the present-day lack of education among
workers. It is well understood that a reduction o f working hours is to be
considered an indispensable preliminary condition.
Yes, without doubt, the workers will do all within their means to give
themselves the education which it is possible to obtain under the material
conditions of their present life. But, without letting themselves be led
astray b y the siren voices of the bourgeoisie and of the bourgeois Socialists,
they should above ail concentrate their efforts upon the solving of this
great problem of economic emancipation, which should be the source o f
all other emancipations.80
 338 THE PO LITICA L PH ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

CHAPTER 13 Sil7fl7Tl(ltW7l

I. The negation of G od and the principle of authority, divine and human,

and also of any tutelage by a man over wenEven when such tutelage is
attempted upon adult persons wholly deprived of education, or the ignorant
masses, and whether that tutelage is exercised in the name of higher consid
erations, or even of scientific reasons presented by a group of individuals of
generally recognized intellectual standing, or by some other classin either
case it would lead to the formation of a sort of intellectual aristocracy, ex
ceedingly odious and harmful to the cause of freedom.
Note 1. Positive and rational knowledge is the only torch lighting up
mans road toward the recognition of truth and the regulation o f his
behavior and his relation to the society surrounding him. But this knowl
edge is subject to errors, and even were this not the case, it would still be
presumptuous to claim to govern men in the name of such knowledge
against their will. A genuinely free society can grant to knowledge only
a two-fold right, enjoyment of which constitutes at the same time a duty:
first, the upbringing and education o f persons of both sexes, equally
accessible to and compulsory upon children and adolescents until they
become of age, after which all tutelage is to cease; and, second, the spread
ing of ideas and systems o f ideas based upon exact science, and the
endeavor, with the aid o f absolutely free propaganda, to have those ideas
deeply permeate the universal convictions of mankind.
Note 2. W hile definitely rejecting any tutelage (in whatever form it
asserts itself) which the intellect developed by knowledge and experience
by business, worldly, and human experience-may attempt to set up over
the ignorant masses, we are far from denying the natural and beneficial
influence o f knowledge and experience upon the masses, provided that
that influence asserts itself very simply, by w ay of the natural incidence
o f higher intellects upon the lower intellects, and provided also that that
influence is not invested with any official authority or endowed with any
privileges, either political or social. For both these things necessarily
produce upon one hand the enslavement of the masses, and on the other
hand corruption, disintegration, and stupefaction of those who are invested
and endowed with such powers.
II. The negation of free will and the right o f society to punish,
since every human individual, with no exception whatever, is but an
involuntary product of natural and social environment. There are four
basic causes of mans immorality: i. Lack of rational hygiene and up
bringing; 2. Inequality of economic and social conditions; 3. The ignorance
 339 Summation
of the masses flowing naturally from this situation; 4. And the unavoidable
consequence of those conditionsslavery.
Rational upbringing, education, and the organization of society upon a
basis of freedom and justice, are to take the place of punishment. During
the more or less prolonged transitional period which is bound to follow the
Social Revolution, society, having to defend itself against incorrigible
individuals~~not criminal, but dangerousshall never apply to them any
other form of punishment except that of placing them beyond the pale of
its guarantees and solidarity, that is, of having them expelled.
III. The negation of free will does not connote the negation o f free
dom. On the contrary, freedom represents the corollary, the direct result
of natural and social necessity.
Note 1. Man is not free in relation to the laws of Nature, which con
stitute the first basis and the necessary condition o f his existence. T h ey
pervade and dominate him, just as they pervade and dominate every
thing that exists. Nothing is capable of saving him from their fateful
omnipotence; any attempt to revolt on his part would simply lead to
suicide. But thanks to the faculty inherent in his nature, by virtue of
which he becomes conscious o f his environment and learns to master it,
man can gradually free himself from the natural and crushing hostility of
the external worldphysical as well as socialwith the aid of thought,
knowledge, and the application of thought to the conative instinct, that
is, with the aid of his rational will.
Note 2. Man represents the last link, the highest level in the continuous
scale o f beings who, beginning with the simplest elements and ending with
man, constitute the world known to us. Man is an animal who, thanks to
the higher development o f his organism, especially the brain, possesses the
faculty of thought and speech. Therein lie all the differences separating
him from all other animal specieshis brothers, older in point of time and
younger in point of mental faculties. That difference, however, is vast. It
is the sole cause of what we call our history, the meaning of which can be
briefly expressed in the following words: Man starts with animality in
order to arrive at humanity, that is, the organization of society with the
aid of science, conscious thought, rational work, and freedom.
Note 3. Man is a social animal, like many other animals which appeared
upon the earth before he did. H e does not create society by means of a
free agreement: he is bom in the midst of Nature, and apart from it he
could not live as a human beinghe could not even become one, nor speak,
think, will, or act in a rational manner. In view of the fact that society
shapes and determines his human essence, man is dependent upon it as
completely as upon physical Nature, and there is no great genius who is
exempt from its domination.
IV . Social solidarity is the first human law; freedom is the second law.
Both laws interpenetrate and are inseparable from each other, thus con-
 340 THE PO LITIC A L PH ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

stituting the very essence of humanity. Thus freedom is not the negation
of solidarity; on the contrary, it represents the development of, and so
to speak, the humanization o f the latter.
V. Freedom does not connote mans independence in relation to the
immutable laws of Nature and society. ft is first of all mans ability grad
ually to emancipate himself from the oppression of the external physical
world with the aid of knowledge and rational labor; and, further, it
signifies man's right to dispose of himself and to act in conformity with
his own views and convictions: a right opposed to the despotic and authori
tarian claims of another man, a group, or class of people, or society as a
whole.
N ote 1. One should not confuse sociological laws, otherwise called the
laws of social physiology, and which are just as immutable and necessary
for every man as the laws of physical Nature, for in substance they also
are physical lawsone should not confuse those laws with political, crimi
nal, and civil laws, which to a greater or lesser extent express the morals,
customs, interests, and views dominant in a given epoch, society, or
section of that society, a separate class of society. It stands to reason that,
being recognized by the majority of people, or even b y one ruling class,
they exert a powerful influence upon every individual. That influence is
beneficial or harmful, depending upon its character, but so far as society
is concerned, it is neither right nor useful to have these laws imposed upon
anyone b y force, by the exercise of authority, and contrary to the con
victions of the individual. Such a method o f imposing laws would imply
an attempted infringement o f freedom, o f personal dignity, of the very
human essence of the members of society.
V I. A natural society, in the midst o f which every man is bom and
outside of which he could never become a rational and free being7 becomes
humanized only in the measure that all men comprising it become, individ
ually and collectively, free to an ever greater extent.
Note 1. T o be personally free means for every man living in a social
milieu not to surrender his thought or will to any authority but his own
reason and his own understanding of justice; in a word, not to recognize
any other truth but the one which he himself has arrived at, and not to
submit to any other law but the one accepted b y his own conscience. Such
is the indispensable condition for the observance of human dignity, the
incontestable right o f man, the sign of his humanity.
T o be free collectively means to live among free people and to be free
by virtue o f their freedom. A s w e have already pointed out, man cannot
become a rational being, possessing a rational will, (and consequently he
could not achieve individual freedom) apart from society and without its
aid. Thus the freedom of everyone is the result of universal solidarity. But
if we recognize this solidarity as the basis and condition o f every individual
freedom, it becomes evident that a man living among slaves, even in the
34* Summation
capacity of their master, will necessarily become the slave o f that state of
slavery, and that only by emancipating himself from such slavery will he
become free himself.
Thus, too, the freedom of all is essential to my freedom. And it follows
that it would be fallacious to maintain that the freedom of all constitutes a
limit for and a limitation upon my freedom, for that would be tantamount
to the denial of such freedom. On the contrary, universal freedom repre
sents the necessary affirmation and boundless expansion of individual
freedom.
VII. Individual freedom of every man becomes actual and possible
only through the collective freedom of society of 'which man constitutes
a part by virtue of a natural and immutable law.
Note i. Like humanity, of which it is the purest expression, freedom
presents not the beginning but the final moment o f history. Human so
ciety, as we have indicated, begins with animality. Primitive people and
savages hold their humanity and their human rights in so little esteem
that they begin by devouring one another, which unfortunately still con
tinues at full speed. The second stage in the course of human development
is slavery. The thirdin the midst of which we now liveis the period
of economic exploitation, of wage labor. The fourth period, toward which
we are aiming and which, it is to be hoped, we are approaching, is the
epoch of justice, of freedom and equality, the epoch of mutual solidarity.
VIII. The primitive, natural man becomes a free man, becomes human
ized, a free and moral agent; in other words, he becomes aware of his
humanity and realizes within himself and for himself his own human aspect
and the rights of his fellow-beings. Consequently man should wish the
freedom, morality, and humanity of all men in the interest of his own
humanity, his own morality, and his personal freedom.
IX. Thus respect for the freedom of others is the highest duty of man.
T o love this freedom and to serve itsuch is the only virtue. That is the
basis of all morality; and there cm be no other.
X. Since freedom is the result and the clearest expression of solidarity,
that is, of mutuality of interest, it can be realized only under conditions of
equality. Political equality can be based only upon economic and social
equality. And realization of freedom through equality constitutes justice.
XI. Since labor is the only source of all values, utilities, and wealth in
general, man, who is primarily a social being, must work in order to live.
XII. O nly associated labor, that is, labor organized upon the principles
of reciprocity and co-operation, is adequate to the task of maintaining the
existence of a large and somewhat civilized society. Whatever stands for
civilization could be created only by labor organized and associated in
this manner. The whole secret of the boundless productivity of human
labor consists first o f all in applying to a greater or lesser extent scientifically
developed reasonwhich in turn is the product of the already organized
 342 THE P O LITIC A L PH ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

laborand then in the division of that labor, but under the necessary con
dition o f simultaneously combining or associating this divided labor.
XIIL The basis and the main content o f all historic iniquities, of all
political and social privileges, is the enslavement and exploitation of
organized labor for the benefit of the strongestfor conquering nations,
classes, or individuals. Such is the true historic cause of slavery, serfdom,
and wage labor; and that is, by w ay o f a summary, the basis of the so-
called right o f private and inherited property.
X IV . From the moment that property rights became generally accepted,
society had to split into two parts: on the one hand the property-owning,
privileged minority, exploiting organized and forced labor, and on the
other hand millions of proletarians, enthralled as slaves, serfs, or wage
workers. Somethanks to leisure based upon the satisfaction o f needs and
material comforthave at their disposal the highest blessings of civiliza
tion, education, and upbringing; and others, the millions of people, are
condemned to forced labor, ignorance, and perpetual want.
X V . Thus the civilization of the minority is based upon the forced bar
barism of the vast majority. Consequently the individuals who by virtue o f
their social position enjoy all sorts of political and social privileges, and all
men o f property, are in reality the natural enemies, the exploiters, and
oppressors o f the great masses of the people.
X V I. Because leisurethe precious advantage of the ruling classesis
necessary for the development of the mind, and because the development
of character and personality likewise demands a certain degree o f well
being and freedom in ones movements and activity, it was therefore quite
natural that the ruling classes have proved to be more civilized, more
intelligent, more human, and to a certain extent more moral than the great
masses o f the people. But in view of the fact that on the other hand inac
tivity and the enjoyment of all sorts of privileges weaken the body, dry
up ones affections, and misdirect the mind, it is evident that sooner or
later the privileged classes are bound to sink into corruption, mental torpor,
and servility. W e see this happening right now.
X VII. On the other hand, forced labor and utter lack o f leisure doom
the great masses of the people to barbarism. B y themselves they cannot
foster and maintain their own mental development since, because of their
inherited burden of ignorance, the rational elements of their toilthe appli
cation of science, the combining and managing of productive forcesare
left exclusively to the representatives of the bourgeois class. O nly the mus
cular, irrational, mechanical elements of work, which become even more
stupefying as a result of the division of labor, have been apportioned to the
masses, who are stunned, in the full sense o f the word, b y their daily,
galley-slave drudgery.
But despite all that, thanks to the prodigious moral power inherent in
labor, because in demanding justice, freedom, and equality for themselves,
 343 Summation
the workers therewith demand the same for all, there being no other social
group (except women and children) who are getting a rougher deal in life
than the workers; because they have enjoyed life very little and therefore
have not abused it, which means that they have not become satiated with it;
and also because, lacking education, they, however, possess the enormous
advantage of not having been corrupted and distorted b y egoistic interests
and falsehoods prompted by acquisitiveness, and thus have retained their
natural energy of character while the privileged classes sink ever deeper,
become debilitated, and rot awayit is due to all this that only the workers
believe in life, that only the workers love and desire truth, freedom, equality,
and justice, and that it is only the workers to whom the future belongs.
X VIII.Our Socialist program demands and should unremittingly demand:

1. Political, economic, and social equalization of all classes and

all people living on the earth.
2. Abolition of inheritance of property.
3. Appropriation o f land by agricultural associations, and of
capital and all the means of production b y the industrial associa
tions.
4. Abolition o f the patriarchal family law, based exclusively
upon the right to inherit property and also upon the equalization
of man and woman in point o f political, economic, and social
rights,
5. The upkeep, upbringing, and educating o f the children of
both sexes until they become of age, it being understood that
scientific and technical training, including the branches o f higher
teaching, is to be both equal for and compulsory for ail.

The school is to replace the church and to render unnecessary criminal

codes, gendarmes, punishments, prisons, and executioners.
Children do not constitute anyones property; they are not the prop
erty of their parents nor even of society. T h ey belong only to their own
future freedom.
But in children this freedom is not yet real. It is only potential; for real
freedom, that is, the full awareness and the realization thereof in every indi
vidual, pre-eminently based upon the feeling of ones dignity and upon
genuine respect for the freedom and dignity of others, that is, upon justice
such freedom can develop in children only by virtue of the rational
development of their minds, character, and rational will.
Hence it follows that society, the whole future of which depends upon
the adequate education and upbringing o f children, and which therefore
has not only the right but also the duty to watch over them, is the only
natural guardian of children o f both sexes. And since, as a result o f the
forthcoming abolition of the right of inheritance, society is to become the
 344 THE P O LITIC A L PH ILO S O P H Y O F BAKUNIN
only heir, it will then deem it as one of its primary duties to furnish all
the necessary means for the upkeep, upbringing, and education of children
of both sexes, irrespective o f their origin and of their parents.
The rights o f the parents shall reduce themselves to loving their chil
dren and exercising over them the only authority compatible with that,
inasmuch as such authority does not run counter to their morality, their
mental development, and their future freedom.
Marriage, in the sense of being a civil and political act, like any inter
vention of society in questions of love, is bound to disappear. The chil
dren will be entrustednaturally and not by rightto the mother, as her
prerogative under rational supervision o f society.
In view of the fact that minors, especially children, are largely incapable
of reasoning and consciously governing their acts, the principle of tutelage
and authority, which is to be eliminated from the life of society, will still
find a natural sphere o f application in the upbringing and education o f
children. However, such authority and tutelage should be truly humane
and rational, and altogether alien to all the refrains o f theology, meta
physics, and jurisprudence. T hey should start from the premise that from
his birth not a single human being is either bad or good, and that good,
that is, the love of freedom, the consciousness o f justice and solidarity, the
cult o f or rather the respect for truth, reason, and labor, can be developed
in men only through rational upbringing and education. Thus, we empha
size here, the sole aim of this authority should be to prepare all children
for the utmost freedom. This aim can be achieved only b y gradual self-
effacement on the part o f authority, and its giving place to self-activity on
the part of the children, in the measure that they approach maturity.
Education should embrace all the branches of science, technique, and
knowledge of crafts. It should be at once scientific and professional, gen
eral, compulsory for all children, and special-conforming to the tastes and
proclivities o f every one o f them, so that every young boy and girl, upon
leaving school, and becoming of age would be fit for either mental or
manual work.
Freed from the tutelage o f society, they are at liberty to enter or not
to enter any o f the labor associations. However, they will necessarily want
to enter such associations, for with the abolition o f the right o f inheritance
and the passing of all the land, capital, and means o f production into the
hands of the international federation of free workers associations, there
will be no more room nor opportunity for competition, that is, for the
existence of isolated labor.
N o one will be able to exploit the labor of others: everyone will have to
work in order to live. And anyone who does not want to work will have the
alternative of starving if he cannot find an association or a commune which
will feed him out of considerations o f pity. But then it also will be found
just not to grant him any political rights, since, though being an able-bodied
 345 Summation
man, he prefers the shameful state of living at the expense of someone else;
for social and political rights will have only one basisthe labor contributed
by everyone.
During the transitional period, however, society will be confronted with
the problem of individuals (and unfortunately there will be many of them)
who grew up under the prevailing system of organized injustice and special
privileges and who were not brought up with a realization o f the need
for justice and true human dignity and likewise with respect for and the
habit of work. In regard to those individuals revolutionary or revolution
ized society will find itself facing a distressing dilemma: it will either have
to force them to work, which would be despotism, or let itself be exploited
by idlers; and that would be a new slavery and the source of a new cor
ruption of society.
In a society organized upon the principles of equality and justice, which
serve as the basis o f true freedom, given a rational organization of educa
tion and upbringing and likewise the pressure of public opinion, which,
being based upon respect for labor, must despise idlersin such a society
idleness and parasites will be impossible. Having become exceedingly rare
exceptions, those cases of idleness shall be regarded as special maladies to
be subjected to clinical treatment. O nly childrenuntil they reach a cer
tain degree of strength, and afterward only inasmuch as it is necessary to
give them time to acquire knowledge and not to overload them with work
invalids, old people, and sick persons can be exempted from labor without
resulting in the loss of anyones dignity or the impairment o f the rights of
free men.
XIX. In the interests of their radical and full economic emancipation,
workers should demand the complete and resolute abolition of the State
with all of its institutions.
Note i. W hat is the State? It is the historic organization of authority
and tutelage, divine and human, extended to the masses of people in the
name o f some religion, or in the name o f the alleged exceptional and
privileged ability of one or sundry property-owning classes, to the detri
ment of the great mass o f workers whose forced labor is cruelly exploited
by those classes.
Conquest, which became the foundation o f property right and o f the
right of inheritance, is also the basis o f every State. The legitimized ex
ploitation of the labor of the masses for the benefit of a certain number
of property-owners (most of whom are fictitious, there being only a very
small number of those who exist in reality) consecrated by the Church in
the name of a fictitious Divinity which has always been made to side with
the strongest and cleverestthat is what is called right. The development of
prosperity, comfort, luxury, and the subtle and distorted intellect of the
privileged classesa development necessarily rooted in the misery and ig
norance of the vast majority of the populationis called civilization; and
 346 THE PO LITIC A L P H ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

the organization guaranteeing the existence of this complex of historic

iniquities is called the State.
So the workers must wish for the destruction of the State.
Note 2. The State, necessarily reposing upon the exploitation and
enslavement of the masses, and as such oppressing and trampling upon all
the liberties of the people, and upon any form of justice, is bound to be
brutal, conquering, predatory, and rapacious in its foreign relations. The
Stateany State, whether monarchy or republicis the negation of human
ity. It is the negation of humanity because, while setting as its highest or
absolute aim the patriotism of its citizens, and placing, in accordance with
its principles, above ail other interests in the world the interests of its
own self-preservation, of its own might within its own borders and its
outward expansion, the State negates all particular interests and the human
rights of its subjects as well as the rights of aliens. And thereby the State
violates international solidarity among peoples and individuals, placing
them outside o f justice, and outside of humanity.
Note 3. The State is the younger brother of the Church. It can find no
other reason for its existence apart from the theological or metaphysical
idea. Being by its nature contrary to human justice, it has to seek its rationale
in the theological or metaphysical fiction of divine justice. The ancient world
lacked entirely the concept of nation or society, that is, the latter was com
pletely enslaved and absorbed by the State, and every State deduced its
origin and its special right of existence and domination from some god or
system of gods deemed to be the exclusive patron of that State, In the
ancient world man as an individual was unknown; the very idea of humanity
was lacking. There were only citizens. That is w h y in that civilization
slavery was a natural phenomenon and the necessary basis for the fruits
o f citizens.
W hen Christianity destroyed polytheism and proclaimed the only God,
the States had to revert to the saints from the Christian paradise; and every
Catholic State had one or several patron saints, its defenders and inter
cessors before the Lord God, who on that occasion may well have found
himself in an embarrassing position. Besides, every State still finds it neces
sary to declare that the Lord God patronizes it in some special manner.
Metaphysics and the science of law, based in its idea upon metaphysics
but in reality upon the class interests o f the propertied classes, also sought
to discover a rational basis for the fact of the existence o f the State. T h ey
reverted to the fiction of the general and tacit agreement or contract, or
to the fiction of objective justice and the general good of the people allegedly
represented by the State.
According to the Jacobin democrats, the State has the task of making
possible the triumph of the general and collective interests of all citizens
over the egoistic interests of separate individuals, communes, and regions.
The State is universal justice and collective reason triumphing over the
 347 Summation
egoism and stupidity of individuals. It is the declaration of the worthless
ness and the unreasonableness of every individual in the name of the wis
dom and the virtue of all. It is the negation of fact, or, which is the same
thing, infinite limitation of all particular liberties, individual and collective,
in the name of freedom for allthe collective and general freedom which
in reality is only a depressing abstraction, deduced from the negation or
the limitation of the rights of separate individuals and based upon the
factual slavery o f everyone.
In view of the fact that every abstraction can exist only inasmuch as
it is backed up by the positive interests of a real being, the abstraction
State in reality represents the positive interests of the ruling and property-
owning, exploiting, and so-called intelligent classes, and also the systematic
immolation for their benefit of the interests and freedom of the enslaved
masses.*
* According to Max Nettlau, this summation by Bakunin was written March 15-30,1871.
 P A R T IV

Tactics and Methods o f Realization

C H A P T E R I The Rationale o f
Revolutionary Tadics

T h e Historic-Economic Rationale. I admit that the present order* that

is, the political, civil, and social order now existing in any country, is the
final summary, or rather the m u lt of the clash, struggle, worsting, and
mutual annihilation of one another, and also of the combination and inter
action o f all the heterogeneous forces, both inward and outward, operat
ing within and acting upon a country. W hat follows from this? In the first
place, it follows that a change in the prevailing order is possible and that
it can take place only as a result of a change in the equilibrium of forces
operating in a given society.
In order to solve the important problem as to how the existing equi
librium of social forces was changed in the past and how it can be changed
in the present, we must look closer into the essential nature of those forces.
Just as it is the case in the organic and the non-organic world, wherein
everything that lives, or that merely exists in a mechanical, physical, or
chemical sense, invariably influences the surrounding world in some degree,
so is it in society, where even the most low ly human being embodies a
modicum of the social force. O f course, taken in isolation, this force, com
pared to the vast totality of all social forces, is insignificant and almost nil
in its effect. Therefore if I alone, with no aid from anyone, intended to
change the existing order only because it did not suit meand me aloneI
should prove to be a damned fool, and nothing else but that.
If, however, we had ten, twenty, or thirty persons aiming at the same
goal, that would be a much more serious affair, although still woefully
inadequate whenever the goal in question is not of a petty, trivial kind.
The co-ordinated efforts of a few dozen persons are to be taken much
more seriously than the efforts of a single person, and this is true not just
because the sum of a few dozen people is numerically greater than one
personin a society of many millions the sum of a few dozen insignificant
units is almost nil compared with the total social forcebut because when
ever a few dozen persons combine their efforts to achieve a common
objective, this gives birth to a new force which far exceeds the simple
arithmetical sum of their isolated individual efforts.

35*
 3 52 T H E P O LITICA L PH ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

In political economy this fact was noted b y Adam Smith and ascribed
to the natural effect of division of labor. But in the particular case analyzed
b y us it is not only division o f labor which works, that is, creates the new
forcebut to an even greater extent it is the agreement, and then the
evolving of a plan of action, invariably followed b y the best distribution
and the mechanical or calculated combination of the few forces in accord
ance with the evolved plan.
The point is that from the beginning of history, in all countrieseven
in the most enlightened and intelligent onesthe whole sum of social forces
is divided into two main categories, essentially differing from and nearly
always opposed to each other. One category comprises the sum of uncon
scious, instinctive, traditional, and as if elemental forces, which are almost
totally unorganized although astir with lifewhile the other category rep
resents an incomparably smaller sum o f conscious, concerted, purposefully
combined forces which act according to a given plan and which are
mechanically organized in keeping with the latter. The first category
embraces the mass of many millions of people and in many respects a
considerable majority o f the educated and privileged classes and even of
the lower ranks of the bureaucracy and soldieryalthough the ruling
orders, the bureaucracy, and the military, because o f their essential nature,
the advantages o f their position, and their expeditious, more or less mechan
ical organization, belong to the second category, with the government as
its center. In a word, society is divided into a minority consisting o f
exploiters and a majority comprising the vast mass o f people, more or less
consciously exploited b y the others.
It stands to reason that it is almost impossible to draw a hard and
fast line separating one world from the other. In society, as in Nature, the
most contrary forces coalesce at their extremes. But one can say that with
us, for instance, it is the peasantry and the burgesses or commoners that
represent the great masses o f exploited people. Above them rise in hier
archical order all the strata, which, the nearer they are to the plain people,
the more they belong to the exploited category and the less they them
selves exploit others; while, on the other hand, the further they are from
the people, the more they are part of the exploiting category and the less
do they themselves suffer from exploitation.
Thus the social layers rising one level above the peasantry and the
commonalty are the kulaks in the villages and the Merchant Guilds, which
without doubt exploit the people but which in turn are exploited by the
priests, noblemen, and above all by both the lower and higher officials o f
the government. The same can be said o f the lower ranks o f the priesthood
which are severely exploited by the higher ranks, and the gentry, who are
over-shadowed b y the rich land-owners and ex-merchants on one hand and
on the other hand b y officialdom and the court aristocracy. The bureau
cracy and the military represent a strange mixture o f passive and active
355 TJbe Rationale of Revolutionary Tactics
elements in the matter of State exploitation, there being more o f passivity
in the lower ranis and more of conscious activity in the higher ranis.
A t the top of this ladder stands a small group representing the category
of exploiters in its purest and most active sense: all the higher officials of
the military, civil, and ecclesiastical departments, and alongside of them,
the high men of the financial, industrial and commercial world, devouring,
with the connivance and under the protection of the government, the
wealth or rather the poverty of the people.
Here we have a true picture of the distribution of the social forces in
the Russian dominions. So let us trace the numerical ratio o f those three
categories. Out of the seventy millions constituting the population of the
whole empire, the first or the lower category of exploited people com
prises no less than sixty-seven or even sixty-eight millions. The number of
conscious, pure and simple exploiters does not exceed three, four, or at its
utmost, ten thousand individuals. There remains then about tw o or three
million for the middle category, consisting o f people who are at the same
rime exploited and exploiters of others. This category can be divided into
two sections: the vast majority, who are being exploited to an extent
greater than their own share of the exploitation o f others, and a minority
who are exploited only to a small degree and who are more or less con
scious o f their own role as exploiters. If w e add this latter section to that
of the top-ranking exploiters we get about 200,000 deliberate and avaricious
exploiters out of 70,000,000 population, so that the ratio is about one to
three hundred and fifty.
N o w the question is: H ow could such a monstrous ratio ever come into
existence? H ow is it that 200,000 are capable of exploiting 70,000,000 with
impunity? Have those 200,000 people more physical vigor or more natural
intelligence than the other 70,000,000? It is enough to pose this question
to have it answered in the negative. Physical vigor is o f course out of the
question, and as to native intelligence, if we take at random 200,000 people
from the lower strata and compare them with the 200,000 exploiters in
point o f mental capacity, we shall convince ourselves that the former
possess greater native intelligence than the latter. But the latter do have
an enormous advantage over the mass of people, the advantage of education.
Yes, education is a force, and however bad, superficial, and distorted
the education of the higher classes may be, there is no doubt that, together
with other causes, it contributes mightily toward the retaining o f power
in the hands of a privileged minority. But here the question comes up:
W h y is the minority educated while the vast majority remains unedu
cated? Is it because the minority has more ability in that direction than
the majority? Again it is enough to ask this question to have it answered
in the negative. There is much more of such ability among the mass of
people than among the minority. It means that the minority enjoys the
privilege o f education for altogether different reasons.
* 354 T H E PO LITICA L P H ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

W hat are those reasons? T hey are, of course, known to everyone: The
minority has long been in a position where education has been accessible to
it, and still is in such a position, while the masses of people cannot obtain
m y education; that is, the minority is in the advantageous position o f
exploiters while the people are the victims of their exploitation. It means
then that the attitude of the exploiting minority toward the exploited
people had been determined prior to the moment when the minority began
:o strive to regain power by means of education. W hat could have been
the basis of its power prior to that time? It could have been only the
power of agreement.
AH States, past and present, had agreement as their invariable and chief
starting point. In vain is this principal basis for the formation of States
sought in religion. There is no doubt that religion, that is, peoples igno
rance, wild fanaticism, and the stupidity conditioned by those factors,
contributed greatly toward the systematic organization for the exploita
tion of the mass of people called the State. But in order that this stupidity
might be exploited it was necessary that there should be exploiters who
would enter into a mutual understanding and form a State.
Take a hundred fools and invariably you will find a few among them
who are somewhat more clever than the rest, although still being foolish
as the average run goes. Therefore it is natural that they should become
leaders, and as such they probably would fight one another until they
came to realize that in doing so they would destroy each other to no
ones advantage or profit. Having realized this, they begin to strive toward
unity. T h ey may not unite altogether, but they will band into two or
three or several groups, with as many agreements. Then a struggle will
ensue among those groups, each of them using every possible means to
win the great mass of people to its sidespecious services, bribery, cheat
ing, and of course religion. There you have the beginning of State exploita
tion.
Finally one party, based upon the most extensive and intelligent com
pact, having vanquished all the others, attains exclusive power and creates
the law of the State. That victory naturally attracts to the victor many
persons from the camps o f the vanquished, and if the victorious party is
clever enough, it willingly accepts them into its midst, shows respect and
grants all sorts of privileges to the strongest and most influential members
of the vanquished party, distributing them in accordance with their special
qualificationsthat is, the means and methods, acquired by habit or inheri
tance, whereby they exploit, more or less consciously, all the other fools
some into the priesthood, some into the nobility, and others into the mer
cantile field. That is how estates of the realm are created, and the State
emerges into the open. Afterward, one or another religion explains it; that
is, it deifies the accomplished fact of violence, and thereby lays the founda
tion for the so-called raison d'Etat.
 355 T & e Rationale of Revolutionary Tactics
Once consolidated, the privileged orders continue to develop and
strengthen their hold upon the masses by means of natural growth and
inheritance. The children and grandchildren of the founders of the ruling
classes become ever greater exploiters, more so by virtue of their social
position than because o f any conscious or calculated plan. As a result of a
premeditated plot, power is concentrated more and more in the hands of a
sovereign government and the minority standing nearest to it, making, so
far as the great majority of the exploiting classes go, the exploitation of
the masses more and more of a habitual, traditional, ritualistic, and more
or less naively accepted function.
Little by little, and the further the more so, the majority of exploiters
by birth and inherited social position, begin to believe seriously in their
innate and historic rights. And not only they, but also the exploited masses,
subjected to the influence of the same traditional habit and the baneful
effect of ill-intentioned religious doctrines, begin likewise to believe in the
rights of their exploiters and tormentors; and continue to believe in them
until the measure of their sufferings is filled to the brim, awakening in
them a different consciousness.
This new consciousness awakens and develops in the masses of people
very slowly. Centuries may pass before it begins stirring; but once it
commences to stir, no force is capable of stemming its course. That is
why the great task of statecraft is to prevent this awakening of rational
consciousness in the people, or at least to slow it down to the utmost.
The slowness o f the development of rational consciousness in the
people is due to two causes: first, the people are overwhelmed by hard
work and even more b y the distressing cares of daily life; and second, their
political and economic position condemns them to ignorance. Poverty,
hunger, exhausting toil, and continuous oppression are sufficient to break
down the strongest and the most intelligent man. Add to these ignorance,
and you soon come to wonder how these poor people do manage, albeit
slowly, to advance, and not, on the contrary, to become ever more stupid
from year to year.
Knowledge is power, ignorance is the cause of social impotence. The
situation would not be so bad if all sank to the same level of ignorance. If
that were the case the ones whom Nature endowed with greater intelli
gence would be the stronger. But in view of the advancing education of
the dominant classes, the natural vigor of the peoples minds loses its sig
nificance. W hat is education, if not mental capital, the sum of the mental
labor o f all past generations? H ow can an ignorant mind, vigorous though
it may be by nature, hold out in a struggle against collective mental
power produced b y centuries of development? That is why we often see
intelligent men of the people stand in awe before educated fools. These
fools overwhelm one not by their own intelligence but b y acquired
knowledge.
 356 THE P O LITICA L P H ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

This, however, happens only when an astute peasant meets an educated

fool on some plane of affairs which lie beyond the scope of the peasants
understanding. In his own realm of familiar matters the peasant is more
than a match for the average educated person. The trouble is that because
of the ignorance of the plain people the scope of the latters thinking is
very narrow. Those peasants are rare whose mental outlook reaches beyond
their villages, whereas the most mediocre educated man learns to embrace
with his superficial mind the interests and the life of whole countries. It
is mainly ignorance which prevents the people from becoming aware of
their common interests, and of their immense numerical power. It is igno
rance that prevents them from evolving a common understanding among
themselves and building up an organization of rebellion against organized
robbery and oppressionagainst the State. Therefore every discreet State
will use all sorts of means to preserve this condition of peoples ignorance
upon which the power and the very existence of the State rest.
Just as in the State the people are doomed to ignorance, so the ruling
classes are bound, by their position in the State, to advance the cause of
State civilization. Until now there was no other civilization in history
apart from ruling-class civilization. H ie real people, the drudge-people,
were only tools and victims of that civilization. Their hard unskilled labor
created the material for social enlightenment which in turn increased the
dominant power of the ruling classes over them, while rewarding the
people with poverty and slavery.
If class education kept on progressing while the peoples minds re
mained in the same state, the slavery of the people would become more
intensified with each new generation. But fortunately we have neither an
uninterrupted forward march by the ruling classes, nor absolute inertia
on the part of the people. And the kernel of ruling-class education contains
a worm, hardly noticeable at first but growing in the measure that this
enlightenment keeps on advancing, a worm gnawing at its vitals and finally
destroying it altogether. This worm is nothing else but privilege, false
hood, the exploitation and oppression of the people, which constitute the
essence of all class rule and therefore of the consciousness of the ruling
classes.
In the first heroic period of rule by the estates of the realm all this is
scarcely felt or realized. Estate egoism is screened at the beginning of
history by the heroism of individuals who sacrifice themselves, by no
means for the benefit of the people, but for the benefit and the glory of
the class which to them constitutes the whole people and outside of whom
they see only enemies or slaves. Such were the celebrated republicans of
Greece and Rome. But this heroic period soon passes, and is followed by a
period of prosaic use and enjoyment, when privilege, appearing in its true
form, begets egoism, cowardice, meanness, and stupidity. And gradually
the estate vigor turns into decrepitude, corruptions, and impotence.
 357 T f o Rationale of Revolutionary Tactics
During the period of decay o f the estates, there rises up in their midst
a minority of persons who are not corrupted, or rather less corrupted
spirited, intelligent, and magnanimous individuals who prefer truth to their
own interests and who have arrived at the idea of peoples rights, which
are being trampled upon b y estate privileges. Those individuals usually
begin by making attempts to awaken the conscience o f the estate to which
they belong b y birth. Then, convinced of the futility of these efforts, they
turn their back upon the estate, disown it, and become apostles of peoples
emancipation and peoples rebellion. Such were our Decembrists.
If the Decembrists failed, that was due to two principal causes. In the
first place, they were noblemen, which means that they did not have much
intercourse with the people, and that they knew but little about what
needed to be done. Second, for the same reason, they could not approach
the people, could not awaken within them the requisite faith and passion,
since they spoke to the masses in the language of their own class and did
not express the thoughts of the people. O nly men o f the people can be
real leaders of the struggle for their emancipation. But can such liber
ators ever arise out of the depths of the peoples ignorance?
In the measure that the intelligence and vigor of the estates deteriorate,
the intelligence and then the power of people keep on rising. W ith the
people, slow as their forward movement has been, and however much
book learning may be out of their reach, the process of real advancement
has never altogether stopped. The people have two books to learn from:
the first is bitter experience, of want, oppression, plunder, and torments
dealt to them by the government and the ruling classes; the other book
is living, oral tradition, passing from one generation to another and becom
ing ever broader in scope and ever more rational in content. W ith the
exception of the rather rare moments when the people have entered upon
the stage of history as the leading actors, they have confined themselves
to the role of spectators of the historic drama, and if they happened to
take part in it, it was more often in the part of supernumeraries used
whenever the people or troops were shown upon the stage.
In the internecine struggles o f the estate parties, the people have always
been called upon for aid by every faction, and were promised all kinds
of benefits in return for this help. But no sooner did a struggle end
with victory for one or another faction, or with mutual compromise, than
the promises made to the people were forgotten. Moreover, it is the
people who always have to pay for all the losses suffered in such conflicts.
Reconciliation or victory cnuld take place only at the peoples expense.
5'or that matter, it could not happen any other way, and it will always be
this way, until economic and political conditions undergo a radical change.
Around what do all the wranglings of the estate parties revolve?
Around wealth and power. And what is wealth and power if not two
inseparable forms of exploitation of the peoples labor and the peoples
 35 T H E P O LITIC A L PH ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

unorganized power? A ll the estate parties are strong and wealthy only b y
virtue of the power and wealth stolen from the people. It means that the
defeat of any of those parties is indeed the defeat of a certain portion of
the peoples power; the losses and material ruin suffered b y it represent the
ruin of the peoples wealth.
Y et the triumph and enrichment o f the victorious faction not only fail
to benefit the people, but in reality make their position worse; first, be
cause it is solely the people who foot the bill for this struggle; and
second, because the victorious faction, having removed all rivals in the field
o f exploitation, sets about the business o f exploiting the people with a
heightened zest and more outspoken unscrupulousness.
Such is the experience which the people have gone through from the
beginning of history, an experience which finally leads them to rational
consciousness, to a clear understanding of things acquired at the expense
o f no end of suffering, ruin, and shedding o f blood.1

c h a p t e r 2 Economic Problem
Underlies A ll Others

Underlying all historic problems, national, religious, and political, there

has always been the economic problem, the most important and essential
problem not only for the drudge-people but likewise for all the estates, for
the State, and for the Church. Wealth has always been and still is the
indispensable condition for the realization of everything human: authority,
power, intelligence, knowledge, freedom. This is true to such a degree that
the most ideal church in the worldthe Christianwhich preaches con
tempt for worldly blessings, no sooner had it succeeded in vanquishing
paganism and set up its own power upon the ruins o f the latter than it
directed all its energy toward acquiring wealth.
Political power and wealth are inseparable. Those who have power
have the means to gain wealth and must center all their efforts upon
acquiring it, for without it they will not be able to retain their power.
Those who are wealthy must become strong, for, lacking power, they run
the risk o f being deprived of their wealth. T he drudge-people have always
been powerless because they were poverty-stricken, and they were
poverty-stricken because they lacked organized power. In view o f this, it
is no wonder that among all the problems confronting them, they saw
 359 Economic Problem Underlies A ll Others
and see first and chiefly the economic problemthe problem o f obtaining
bread.
The drudge-people, the perpetual victims of civilization, the martyrs
of history, did not always see and understand this problem as they do
now, but they have always felt it strongly, and one may say that among
all the historic problems which evoked their passive sympathy, in all their
instinctive strivings and efforts in the religious and political fields, they
always felt more intensely the economic problem, always aiming at solving
it. Every people, taken in its totality, [is socialistic], and every toiler who
is of the people, is a Socialist b y virtue of his position. And this manner
of being a Socialist is incomparably more serious than the manner of
those Socialists who, belonging to the ruling classes b y virtue of the
advantageous conditions of their lives, arrived at Socialist convictions only
via science and thinking.
I am b y no means inclined to underestimate science or thought. 1 realize
that it is those two factors which mainly distinguish man from other
animals; I acknowledge them as the guiding stars of any human prosperity.
But at the same time 1 realize that theirs is only a cold light, that is, when
ever they do not go hand-in-hand with life, and that their truth becomes
powerless and sterile when it does not rest upon the truth of life. When
ever they contradict life, science and thought degenerate into sophistry, into
the service of untruthor at least into shameful cowardice and inactivity.
For neither science nor thought exist in isolation, in abstraction; they
manifest themselves only in the real man, and every real man is an
integral being who cannot at the same time seek rigorous truth and theory
and enjoy the fruits of untruth in practice. In every man, even the most
sincere Socialist, belonging, not b y birth but through accidental circum
stances in his life, to the ruling classes, that is, one who is exploiting others,
you can detect this contradiction between thought and life; and this
contradiction invariably paralyzes him, renders him impotent. That is w h y
he can become a wholly sincere Socialist only when he has broken all ties
binding him to the privileged world and has renounced all its advantages.
T he drudge-people have nothing to renounce and nothing to break
away from; they are Socialists b y virtue o f their position. Poverty-
stricken, injured, downtrodden, the toiler becomes b y instinct the repre
sentative o f all indigent people, all the injured and down-troddenand
what is this social problem if not the problem of the ultimate and integral
emancipation of all do\ra-trodden people? The essential difference between
the educated Socialist belonging even though it be only b y virtue of his
education, to the ruling classes, and the unconscious Socialist of the toil
ing people, lies in the fact that the former, while desiring to be a Socialist,
can never become one to the full extent, whereas the latter, while being a
Socialist, is not aware of it, does not know there is a social science in this
world, and has never even heard the name of Socialism.
 360 THE P O LITICA L P H ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

One knows all about Socialism, but he is not a Socialist; the other is
a Socialist, yet does not know about it. W hich is preferable? In my opinion,
it is preferable to be a Socialist. It is almost impossible to pass, so to speak,
from abstract thought into life, from thought unaccompanied b y life and
lacking the driving power of life-necessity. But the reverse, the possibility
o f passing from being to thought, has been proven by the whole history
of mankind. And it is now finding its additional substantiation in the his
tory of the drudge-people.
The entire social problem is now reduced to a very simple question.
The great multitudes of people have been and still are doomed to poverty
and slavery. T h ey have always constituted a vast majority in comparison
to the oppressing and exploiting minority. It means that the power
o f numbers was always on their side. Then w h y have they not used it
until now in order to throw off the ruinous and hateful yoke? Can one
really conceive that there ever was a time when the masses of people loved
oppression, when they did not feel that distressing yoke? That would be
contrary to sound sense, to Nature itself. Every living being strives for
prosperity and freedom, and in order to hate an oppressor, it is not neces
sary even to be a man, it is enough to be an animal. So the long-suffering
patience of the masses is to be accounted for b y other reasons.
One o f the principal causes no doubt lies in the peoples ignorance.
Because of that ignorance they do not conceive of themselves as an all-
powerful mass bound b y the ties of solidarity. T h ey are disunited in their
conception of themselves as much as they are disunited in life, as a result
of the oppressing circumstances. This two-fold disunion is the chief source
of the daily impotence of the people. Because o f that, among ignorant
people, or people standing on the lowest level of education or possessing a
meager historic and collective experience, every person, every community,
views the troubles and oppressions which they suffer as a personal or
particular phenomenon, and not as a general phenomenon affecting all in
the same measure and one which therefore should bind all in one common
venture, in resistance or in work.
W hat happens is just the contrary: every region, commune, family, and
individual regard the others as enemies ready to impose their yoke upon
and despoil the other party; and while this mutual alienation continues,
every concerted party, even one that is hardly organized, every caste or
State power which may represent a comparatively small number o f people,
can easily bamboozle, terrorize, and oppress millions of toilers.
T he second reasonalso a direct sequel o f the very same ignorance-
consists in the fact that the people do not see and do not know the prin
cipal sources of their misery, often hating only the manifestation of the
cause and not the cause itself, just as a dog may bite the stick with which
a man is hitting it but not the man who does the hitting. Therefore the
governments, castes, and parties which until now have based their existence
361 Economic Problem Underlies A ll Others
upon the mental aberrations o f the people, could easily cheat the latter.
Ignorant of the real causes of their woes, the people, of course, could not
have any idea of the ways and means of their emancipation, letting them
selves be shunted from one false road to another, seeking salvation where
there could be none, and lending themselves as tools to be used against
their own numbers b y the exploiters and oppressors.
Thus the masses o f the people, impelled by the same social need of
improving their lives and freeing themselves o f intolerable oppression, let
themselves be carried from one form o f religious nonsense to another,
from one political form designed for the oppression of the people into
another form, just as oppressive, if not even worselike a man tormented
by illness, and tossing from one side to the other, but actually feeling
worse with every turn.
Such has been the history of the drudge-people in all countries,
throughout the world. A hopeless, odious, horrible story capable of driving
to despair anyone seeking human justice. And still one should not let him
self be carried away by this feeling. Disgusting as that history has been
until now, one cannot say that it was in vain or that it did not result in
some benefits. W hat can one do if b y his very nature man is condemned to
work his way, through all kinds of abominations and torments, from pitch
darkness to reason, from a brutish state to humanity? The historic errors,
and the woes going hand-in-hand with them, have produced multitudes of
illiterate people. And those people have paid with their sweat and blood,
with poverty, hunger, slave drudgery, with torment and deathfor every
new movement into which they were drawn by the minorities exploiting
them. Instead o f books which they could not read, history registered those
lessons upon their hides. Such lessons cannot be easily forgotten. B y paying
dearly for every new faith, hope, and error, the masses of people attain
reason via historic stupidities.
Through bitter experience they have come to realize the vanity of all
religious beliefs, o f all national and political movements, as a result of
which the social problem came to be posed for the first time with sufficient
clarity. This problem corresponds to the original and century-long instinct,
but through centuries o f development, from the beginning of the history
of the State, it was obscured b y religious, political, and patriotic mists.
Those mists have now rolled away and Europe is astir with the social
problem.
Everywhere the masses are beginning to perceive the real cause of their
misery, are becoming aware o f the power o f solidarity, and are beginning
to compare their immense numbers with the insignificant number o f their
age-long despoilers. But if they have attained such consciousness, what
prevents them from liberating themselves now?
The answer is: Lack of organization, and the difficulty of bringing
them into mutual agreement.
 362 THE P O LITICA L PH ILO S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

W e have seen that in every historically developed society, like present-

day European society, for instance, the mass of people is divided into three
main categories:

The vast majority, utterly unorganized, exploited but not ex

ploiting others.
A considerable majority embracing all the estates of the realm,
a minority exploiting and exploited in the same measure, oppressed
and oppressing others.
And finally, the smallest minority of exploiters and oppressors
pure and simple, conscious of their function and fully agreed
as to a common plan of action among themselves: the supreme
governing estate.

W e have seen also that in the measure in which it grows and develops,
the majority of those who make up the estates of the realm becomes in
itself a semi-instinctive mass, if you like, State-organized but lacking mutual
understanding or conscious direction in its mass movements and actions.
In relation to the drudge-masses who are not organized at all, they, the
members of the State estates, of course, play the role of exploiters, con
tinuing to exploit them not b y means o f a deliberate, mutually agreed-
upon plan, but through force o f habit, and traditional and juridical right,
mostly believing in the lawfulness and sacredness o f that right.
But at the same time, in regard to the minority in control o f the gov
ernment, the group which has explicit mutual understanding as to its course
of action, this middle group, plays the more or less passive role of an
exploited victim. And since this middle class, although insufficiently or
ganized, still has more wealth, education, greater freedom o f movement
and action, and more of other means necessary to organize conspiracies
and to set up an organizationmore so than the drudge-people haveit fre
quently happens that rebellions break forth from among this middle class,
rebellions often ending in victory over the government and the replacing
of the latter with another government. Such has been the nature of all
the internal political upheavals o f which history tells us.
O ut o f these upheavals and rebellions nothing good could come for the
people. For the estate rebellions are waged because o f injuries to the
estates o f the realm, and not because o f injuries to the people; they have
as an object the interests of the estates, and not the interests o f the people.
N o matter how much the estates fight among themselves, no matter how
much they may rebel against the existing government, none of their revo
lutions has had, or ever could have, for their purpose the overthrow of the
economic and political foundations of the State which make possible the
exploitation of the toiling masses, that is, the very existence of classes and
the class principle. N o matter how revolutionary in spirit those privileged
 363 Economic Problem Underlies A ll Others
classes might be, and much as they might hate a particular form of the
State, the State itself is sacred to them; its integrity, power, and interests
are unanimously held up as supreme interests. Patriotism, that is, the sacri
fice of oneself, of ones person and property, for the purposes of the State,
always has been and still is deemed the highest virtue b y them.
Therefore no revolution, bold and violent though it may be in its
manifestations, has ever dared to put its sacrilegious hand upon the holy
ark o f the State. And since no State is possible without organization, admin
istration, an army, and a considerable number of men invested with author
itythat is, it is impossible without a governmentthe overthrow of one
government is necessarily followed b y the setting up of another, more
sympathetic government, one that is of greater use to the classes which
triumphed in the struggle.
But useful though it may be, the new government, after its honey
moon, begins to incur the indignation of the same classes which brought
it into power. Such is the nature of any authority; it is doomed to work
evil. I am not referring to evil from the point of view of the peoples
interests: the State as the fortress of the estates and the government as the
guardian of the States interests always constitute an absolute evil so far
as the people are concerned. N o, I am referring to the evil felt as such
by the estates for the exclusive benefit of which the existence of the State
and the government is necessary. I say that notwithstanding this necessity,
the State always falls as a heavy burden upon these classes, and, while
serving their essential interests, it nevertheless fleeces and oppresses them,
though to a lesser extent than it does the masses.
A government which does not abuse its power, and which is not oppres
sive, an impartial and honest government acting only for the interests of
all classes and not ignoring such interests in exclusive concern for the per
sons standing at its headsuch a government is, like squaring the circle,
an unattainable ideal because it runs counter to human nature. And human
nature, the nature of every man, is such that, given power over others, he
will invariably oppress them; placed in an exceptional position, and with
drawn from human equality, he becomes a scoundrel. Equality and the
absence of authority are the only conditions essential to the morality of
every man. Take the most radical revolutionist and place him upon the all-
Russian throne or give him dictatorial power, of which so many of our
green revolutionists day-dream, and within a year he will have become
worse than the Emperor himself.
The estates of the realm long ago convinced themselves of it, and gave
currency to an adage proclaiming that government is a necessary evil,1'-
necessary of course for them but b y no means for the people, to whom
the State, and the government necessitated b y it, is not a necessary but a
fatal evil. If the ruling classes could get along without a government,
retaining only the Statethat is, the possibility and the right of exploiting
 364 T H E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
the labor of the peoplethey would not set up one government instead
of another. But historic experiencefor instance, the sorry fate which befell
the Polish gentry-ridden republicshowed them that it would be impos
sible to maintain a State without a government. The lack o f a government
begets anarchy, and anarchy leads to the destruction of the State, that is,
to the enslavement o f the country b y another State, as was the case with
the unfortunate Poland, or the full emancipation of the toiling people and
the abolition o f classes, which, we hope, will soon take place all over
Europe.
In order to minimize the evil worked by every government, the ruling
classes of the State devised various constitutional orders and forms which
now have doomed the existing European States to oscillate between class
anarchy and government despotism, and which have shaken the govern
mental edifice to such an extent that even we, though old men, may hope
to become witnesses and contributing agents of its final destruction. There
is no doubt that when the time of the smash-up arrives, the vast majority
o f the persons belonging to the ruling classes in the State, will close their
ranks around the latter, irrespective o f their hatred toward existing gov
ernments, and will defend it against the enraged toiling people in order to
save the State, save the corner-stone o f their existence as a class.
But w h y is a government necessary for the maintenance of the State?
Because no State can exist without a permanent conspiracy, a conspiracy
directed, o f course, against the masses of drudge-people, for the enslave
ment and fleecing of which all States exist. And in every State the gov
ernment is nothing but a permanent conspiracy on the part o f the minor
ity against the majority which it enslaves and fleeces. It follows clearly
from the very essence o f the State that there never has been and could
not be such a State organization which did not run counter to the interests
of the people and which was not deeply hated by the latter.
Because of the backwardness o f the people, it often happens that, far
from rising against the State, they show a sort o f respect and affection
toward it, expecting justice from it and the avenging of the peoples
wrongs, and therefore they seem to be imbued with patriotic feelings. But
when we look more closely into the real attitude of any of them, of even
the most patriotic people, toward the State, we find that they love and
revere in it only the ideal conception thereof and not the actual manifesta
tion. The people hate the essence o f the State in so far as they come in
touch with it, and are always ready to destroy it in so far as they are
not restrained by the organized force o f the government.
W e have already seen that the larger the exploiting minority in the
State grows, the less it becomes capable of directly governing the States
affairs. The many-sidedness and heterogeneity o f the interests of the gov
erning classes give rise in turn to disorder, anarchy, and the weakening of
the State regime necessary to keep the exploited people in requisite obedi-
 365 Economic Problem Underlies A ll Others
ence. Therefore the interests of all the ruling classes necessarily demand
that an even more compact governmental minority crystalize from their
midst, one that is capable, on account of being few in number, o f agreeing
between themselves to organize their own group and all the forces of the
State for the benefit o f the estates and against the people.
Every government has a two-fold aim. One, the chief and avowed
aim, consists in preserving and strengthening the State, civilization, and
civil order, that is, the systematic and legalized dominance of the ruling
class over the exploited people. The other aim is just as important in the
eyes o f the government, though less willingly avowed in the open, and
that is the preservation of its exclusive governmental advantages and its
personnel The first aim is pertinent to the general interests o f the ruling
classes; the second to the vanity and the exceptional advantages of the
individuals in the government.
By its first aim the government places itself in a hostile attitude toward
the people; b y its second aim toward both the people and the privileged
classes, there being moments in history when the government seemingly
becomes even more hostile toward the possessing classes than toward the
people. This happens whenever the former, growing dissatisfied with it,
try to overthrow it or curtail its power. Then the feeling o f self-preserva
tion impels the government to forget its chief aim constituting the whole
meaning of its existence: the preservation o f the State or class rule and
class welfare as against the people. But those moments cannot last long
because the government, o f whatever nature it may be, cannot exist with
out the estates, just as the latter cannot exist without a government. For
the lack of any other class, the government creates a bureaucratic class
of its own, like our nobility in Russia.
The whole problem of the government consists in the following: how,
by the use of the smallest possible but best organized forces taken from
the people to keep them obedient or in civil order, and at the same time
preserve the independence, not of the people, which of course is out of
the question, but of its State, against the ambitious designs o f the neigh
boring powers, and, on the other hand, to increase its possessions at the
expense of those same powers. In a word, war within and war withoutsuch
is the life of the government. It must be armed and ceaselessly on guard
against both domestic and foreign enemies. Though itself breathing oppres
sion and deceit, it is bound to regard all, within and outside of its borders,
as enemies, and must be in a state of conspiracy against all of them.
However, the mutual enmity of the States and the governments ruling
them cannot compare with the enmity of every one of them toward their
own toiling people: and just as two ruling classes engaged in fierce warfare
are ready to forget their most intransigent hatreds whenever a rebellion
of the drudge-people looms up, so are two States and governments ready
to forsake their enmities and their open warfare as soon as the threat of a
 3 66 TH E PO L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

social revolotion appears on the horizon. The principal and most essential
problem for all governments, States, and ruling classes, whatever form,
name, or pretext they may use to disguise their nature, is to subdue the
people and keep them in thralldom, because this is a problem of life and
death for everything now called civilization or civil State.
A ll means are permitted to a government to attain those aims. W hat in
private life is called infamy, vileness, crime, assumes with governments the
character o f valor, virtue, and duty. MachiavelB was a thousand times right
in maintaining that the existence, prosperity, and power o f every State-
monarchic as well as republicanmust be based upon crime. T h e life of
every government is necessarily a series o f mean, foul, and criminal acts
against all alien peoples and also to a much larger extent against its own
toiling people. It is a never-ending conspiracy against their prosperity
and freedom.
Governmental science has been worked out and improved for centuries.
I do not believe that anyone will accuse me o f overstating the case if I
call this science the highest form of State knavery evolved amid the con
stant struggle of, and by the experience o f all past and present States. This
is the science of fleecing the people in the w ay which they will feel least
but which should not leave any surpluses with themfor any such surplus
would give the people additional powerand which at the same time
should not deprive them of the bare minimum necessary to sustain their
wretched lives and for the further production o f wealth.
It is the science o f taking soldiers from the people and organizing them
b y means o f skilful discipline, and of building up a regular army, the prin
cipal force of the State, a repressive force, maintained for the purpose o f
keeping the people in subjection. It is the science of distributing, cleverly
and expeditiously, a few tens o f thousands o f soldiers and placing them in
the most important spots o f a specific region so as to keep the population
in fear and obedience. It is the science o f covering whole countries with
the finest net of bureaucratic organization, and, b y means o f regulations,
decrees, and other measures, shackling, disuniting, and enfeebling the work
ing people so that they shall not be able to get together, unite, or advance,
so that they shall always remain in the salutary condition o f relative igno
rancethat is, salutary for the government, for the State, and for the ruling
classesa condition rendering it difficult for the people to become influ
enced by new ideas and dynamic personalities.
This is the sole aim of any governmental organization, of the perma
nent conspiracy of the government against the people. And this conspiracy,
openly avowed as such, embraces the entire diplomacy, the internal admin
istrationmilitary, civil, police, courts, finances, and educationand the
Church.
And it is against his huge organization, armed with all means, mental
and material, lawful and lawless, and which in an extremity can always
 367 Economic Problem Underlies A ll Others
count on the co-operation of all or nearly all the ruling classes, that the
poor people have to struggle. The people, though having an overwhelming
preponderance in numbers, are unarmed, ignorant, and deprived of any
organization! Is victory possible? Has the struggle any chance o f success?
It is not enough that the people wake up, that they finally become aware
of their misery and the causes thereof. True, there is a great deal o f ele
mental power, more power indeed than in the government, taken together
with all the ruling classes; but an elemental force lacking organization is
not a real power. It is upon this incontestable advantage of organized force
over the elemental force of the people that the might of the State is based.1
Consequently, the question is not whether they [the people] have the
capacity to rebel, but whether they are capable of building up an organiza
tion enabling them to bring the rebellion to a victorious endnot just to a
casual victory but to a prolonged and ultimate triumph.
It is herein, and exclusively so, one may say, that this whole urgent
problem is centered.2
Therefore the first condition of victory by the people is agreement
among the people or organization of the peoples forces.8

c h a p t e r 3 Socio-Economic and
Psychological Factors

Folk Instincts and Social Science. Social science as a moral doctrine

merely serves to develop and formulate folk instincts. Y et there exists a
considerable gulf between the latter and that science. If those instincts had
been all-sufficient to emancipate the people, such liberation would have
taken place a long time ago. Folk instincts, however, have not been strong
enough to prevent the masses from being victimized, throughout the long
course of their sad and tragic history, by various religious, political, eco
nomic, and social absurdities.1
Folk Instinct as a Revolutionary Element. True, the ordeals through
which the masses of people passed were not altogether lost on them. Those
ordeals left in their wake something approaching a historical conscious
ness, quite as if they had built up a practical science, based upon traditions,
which often takes the place of theoretical science. Thus, for instance, one
can say now with a certain degree o f confidence that no nation in Western
Europe will let itself be swept away by some religious impostor, new
 368 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

Messiah, or political trickster. One can likewise assert that the need for an
economic and social revolution is strongly felt by the European masses; if
the instinct of the people did not assert itself so forcefully, deeply, and
resolutely in this direction, no Socialists in the world, even though they
might be geniuses o f the highest order, would be capable of stirring up
the people.2
H ow would the rural and city proletariat ever be able to resist the
political intrigues o f the clericals, the nobility, and the bourgeoisie? It has
for its defense only one weapon, and that is its instinct, which nearly
always tends toward the true and the just because it is the principal, if
not the sole, victim of the iniquity and falsehoods reigning supreme in
existing society, and, because, oppressed b y privilege, it naturally demands
equality for all.3
Instinct 1$ Not an Adequate Weapon. But instinct is not an ade
quate weapon to safeguard the proletariat against the reactionary machi
nations of the privileged classes. Instinct, left to itself, and in so far as it
has not yet been transformed into conscious, clearly defined thought, easily
lets itself be misled, perverted, and deceived. And it is impossible for it to
rise to this self-awareness without the aid of education and of science; and
sciencethe knowledge o f affairs and o f men, and political experienceall
this is lacking so far as the proletariat is concerned. The sequel to it can
easily be foreseen: the proletariat wants one thing, but clever people, taking
advantage o f its ignorance, make it do something else, without the prole
tariat even suspecting that what it is doing is quite contrary to what it
wishes to do. And when it finally does take note of what is happening, it
is usually too late to undo the evil already committed, of which the pro
letariat is naturally and necessarily the first and principal victim.4
. . . Governments, those officially authorized guardians of public order
and the security o f property and persons, never fail to resort to such
measures when necessary to their preservation. W hen they must, they
become revolutionaries and exploit, divert to their profit, the evil pas
sions, the socialist passions. And we Socialist revolutionaries, we would
not know how to direct these same passions toward their true goal, toward
a goal in keeping with the profound instincts animating them! These in
stincts, I repeat again, are profoundly socialist, for they are the instincts
of every man of labor against ail the exploiters o f laborand just this is
the whole o f elementary, natural, and real Socialism. Everything elseall
the various systems of social and economic organizationall that is only
an experimental elaboration, more or less scientific, unfortunately too often
doctrinaire, of this primitive and fundamental instinct of the people.5
Class Solidarity Is Stronger Than Solidarity of Ideas. Social hatreds,
like religious hatreds} are much more intense, much deeper, than political
hatreds.*
As a general rule, a bourgeois, even if he is a republican of the reddest
369 Socio-Economic and Psychological
variety, will be more affected, impressed, and moved by the misfortunes of
another bourgeoiseven if the latter is a die-hard imperialistthan b y the
misfortunes o f a worker, a man o f the people. This difference of attitude
of course represents a great injustice, but that injustice is not premedi
tatedit is instinctive. It comes from the fact that the conditions and habits
of life which always exercise upon men a more powerful influence than
their ideas and political convictions, those conditions and habits, that special
manner of existence, of developing, thinking, and acting, all those social
relations, so numerous and at the same time so regularly converging upon
one point, which is the bourgeois life, the bourgeois worldall these estab
lish among men belonging to this world (whatever differences o f opinion
may exist in their midst in regard to political matters) a solidarity which
is infinitely more real, profound, powerful, and above all more sincere than
that which may be established between the bourgeoisie and the workers
by virtue of a more or less wide community of convictions and ideas.7
Social Habits: T h eir Role and Significance. . . . Because o f the ani
mal origin of all human society, and as a result of this force of inertia which
exercises as powerful an action in the intellectual and moral world as in
the material world, in every society which has not degenerated but keeps
on progressing and advancing, bad habits, having priority in point of time,
are more deeply rooted than good habits. This explains to us why, out o f
the total number of actual collective habits, in the more or less civilized
countries, nine tenths of them are absolutely worthless.
Let no one imagine that I want to declare war upon the general tendency
of society and men to let themselves be governed b y habit. In this case,
as in many other things, it is inevitable that men obey a natural law, and
it would be absurd to revolt against natural laws. The action of habit in
intellectual and moral life, of individuals as well as of societies, is the same
as the action of vegetative forces in animal life. Both are conditions of
existence and reality. The good as well as the evil, in order to take on
reality, has to pass into habits, whether those of individual man or of
society. A ll the exercises and studies which men go through have only
this aim in view, and the better things take root within man and become
second nature only because o f this force of habit.
It would be sheer folly then to revolt against it, for it is an inexorable
force over which neither human intelligence nor human will ever will be
able to prevail. But if, enlightened b y the rational ideas of our age and by
the true concept o f justice formed by us, w e seriously want to become
men, we have only one thing to do: constantly use our will-power, that
is, the habit o f willing developed within us b y circumstances independent
of ourselves, in order to uproot bad habits and replace them with good
ones. In order to humanize society as a whole, it is necessary ruthlessly to
destroy ail the causes, and ail the economic, political, and social conditions
which produce within individuals the tradition of evil, and to replace them
 370 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

with conditions which will have for their necessary consequence the fos
tering and development within those individuals o f the practice and habit
o f good,8
Poverty Is N o All-Sufficient Factor of Revolution. In Italy, as in any
other country, there exists a single and indivisible world of rapacious
persons, who, plundering the country in the name o f the State, have led
it, for the greater benefit o f that State, to the utmost of poverty and
despair.
But even the most terrible poverty afflicting the proletariat does not in
itself guarantee the inevitability o f revolution. Man is endowed b y Nature
with an astonishing and at times exasperating patience, and only the Devil
knows the lengths to which a worker may go in tolerating those evils
when, in addition to poverty which condemns him to untold privations
and lingering death from starvation, he is endowed with stupidity, obtuse
ness, lack o f realization o f his rights, and unperturbed resignation and
obedience. Such a man will never be roused; he would rather die than
rebel.
Despair as a Revolutionary Factor. W hen driven to extremes of
despondency, he is liable to break forth in a fit o f indignation. Despondency
is a keen, passionate feeling. It shakes him out o f the torpor o f resigned
suffering, and it already presupposes a more or less clear realization o f the
possibility o f a better existence, which, however, he does not hope to attain.
Yet one cannot long remain in a state o f despondency; it rapidly drives
one to death or to espouse a cause. W hat cause? The cause of emancipa
tion, of course, and the winning of better conditions o f existence.
T h e Role of the Revolutionary Ideal. But even poverty and despond
ency are not sufficient to provoke a social revolution. Though they
may provoke a limited number o f local revolts, they are inadequate to
arouse whole masses o f people. That can take place only when the people
are stirred by a universal ideal evolving historically from the depths of
the folk-instinct, anddeveloped, broadened, and clarified b y a series of
significant events, and distressing and bitter experiencesit can take place
only when the people have a general idea of their rights and a deep, pas
sionate, one might even say religious, faith in those rights. W hen this ideal
and this popular faith meet poverty of the kind which drives man into
despondency, then the Social Revolution is near and inevitable, and no
power in the world will be able to stop it.
Revolutions Can Be W aged Only at Definite Historic Moments. I am
going to explain the altogether special situation which may confront French
Socialism following this war* if it ends with a shameful and disastrous
peace for France, The workers will be much more dissatisfied than they
have been until now. This of course is self-evident. But does it follow:
1. That they will become more revolutionary in temper and spirit, b y
The Franco-Prussian war of 1870-7.
3 7 * Socio-Economic and Psychological Factors
their will and decisions? And 2. Even if they become more revolutionary
in temper, will it be easier for them, or just as easy as it is now, to wage a
socia! revolution?10
Despair and Discontent Are Not Sufficient. I do not hesitate to give
a negative answer here to both o f these questions. First: As to the revolu
tionary temper of the working massesand naturally it is not exceptional
individuals that I have in mindit does not depend only upon the greater
or lesser extent of poverty and discontent, but also upon the faith or con
fidence which the working masses have in the justice of and the necessity
for the triumph of their cause. Ever since political societies have been in
existence, the masses always have been poverty-stricken and discontented,
for all political societies, and all Statesrepublican as well as monarchic
from the beginning o f history down to our own days, were always and
are exclusively based, differing only in the degree o f candor, upon the
poverty and the forced labor o f the proletariat. Therefore social and politi
cal rights, like material blessings, have always been the exclusive privilege
of the ruling classes; the laboring masses had for their part only material
privations, and the contempt and violence of all politically organized so
cieties. Hence their abiding discontent.11
Yet this discontent seldom produces revolutions. W e see that even
peoples who are reduced to the utmost misery do not show any signs
o f stirring. W hat is the reason for this? Are they content with their posi
tion? N ot at all. The reason for this is that they are not aware of their
rights, nor have they faith in their own power; and they remain hopeless
slaves because they have neither one nor the other.12
The workers, as was the case after December, will be reduced to com
plete moral and intellectual isolation, and because of that they will be
doomed to utter impotence. A t the same time, in order to decapitate the
working masses, a few hundreds, perhaps a few thousands, of the most
energetic, most intelligent, most convinced and devoted among them will
be arrested and deported to Cayenne, as was done in 1848 and 1851.
And what will the disorganized and beheaded working masses do? T h ey
will eat grass and, whipped b y hunger, they will work furiously to enrich
their employers. W e shall have to wait a long time before the working
people, reduced to such a position, wage a revolution!1*
Sheer Despair, W ithout the Organizing Power of Collective W ill,
Spells Disaster. But if, notwithstanding this miserable position, and driven
on by this French energy which cannot easily resign itself to death, and
driven to an even greater extent by despair, the French proletariat revolts
then of course rifles of the latest make will be put to use to teach reason
to the workers; and against this terrible argument, which the workers will
oppose not with intelligence, organization, or collective will, but only
with the sheer power o f their despair, the proletariat will be more impotent
than before.14
 372 T H E PO L IT IC A L PH ILO SO PH Y OF B A K U N IN
W hat Constitutes the Strength of a Living Socialism. And then?
Then French Socialism will cease to count among the active powers im
pelling the forward movement and the emancipation o f the proletariat of
Europe. There still may be left in France Socialist writers and Socialist
newspapers, if the new government and the Chancellor o f Germany,
Count Bismarck, still deign to tolerate them. But neither authors, nor
philosophers, nor their works, nor finally Socialist newspapers, yet consti
tute a living and powerful Socialism. The latter finds its real existence in
the enlightened revolutionary instinct, in the collective will, and in the
organization, o f the working masses themselves; and when that instinct, that
will, and that organization, are lacking, the best books in the world are
nothing but theorizing in the void, impotent day-dreamings.16

C H A P T E R 4

Revolution Means W ar. Revolutions are not childs play, nor are
they academic debates in which only vanities are hurt in furious clashes,
nor literary jousts wherein only ink is spilled profusely. Revolution means
war, and that implies the destruction of men and things. O f course it is a
pity that humanity has not yet invented a more peaceful means o f prog
ress, but until now every forward step in history has been achieved only
after it has been baptized in blood. For that matter, reaction can hardly
reproach revolution on this point; it has always shed more blood than
the latter.1
Revolution is overthrow o f the State.2
Political and Social Revolutions. Every political revolution which
does not have economic equality as its Immediate and direct aim is, from
the point o f view of popular interests and rights, only a hypocritical and
disguised reaction.3
According to the almost unanimous opinion of the German Socialists,
a political revolution has to precede a social revolutionwhich, in my
opinion, is a grave and fatal error, because every political revolution which
takes place prior to and consequently apart from a social revolution, neces
sarily will be a bourgeois revolution, and a bourgeois revolution can only
further bourgeois Socialism; that is, it will necessarily end in new exploita
tion o f the proletariat by the bourgeoisieexploitation perhaps more skilful
and hypocritical, but certainly no less oppressive.4
37? Revolution and Revolutionary Violence
T h e Political Aspect of a Social Revolution. A t one of the rallies o f
the Lefts held on August 23 or 24, [1870] a rally participated in by Thiers
and a few advanced members o f the Left Center, when the Lefts had
expressed their intention to overthrow the existing government, and Thiers,
who had besought them not to do it, finally asked: But after all, whom
will you put in place of the deposed Ministers, whom will you put in
your Cabinet?* someone (I do not know who it was) answered: There
will be no Cabinet any more; the government will be entrusted to the
armed nation acting through its delegates. Which, if it makes any sense
at all, can mean only the following: a national and limited Revolutionary
Conventionnot a Constituent Assembly, rightfully and legally made up
of delegates from all the cantons of France^wi a convention made up ex
clusively of delegates from cities who have waged a revolution, I do not
know whose mad voice it was that resounded in the midst of this council
o f sage men. Was it, perhaps, Balaams ass, some innocent mount of the
great prophet Gambetta? But it is certain that the ass spoke better than
the prophet. W hat that ass announced was nothing less nor more than a
social revolution, the saving of France by means of such a revolution.5
W ar to the finish! And not only in France, but throughout Europe
and that war can end only with decisive victory by one of the parties and
the downfall of the other.
Military Dictatorship Versus Social Revolution. Either the bourgeois
educated world will subdue and then enslave the rebellious, elemental
forces of the people in order, through the power of the knout and bayo
nets (consecrated, of course, by some sort of divinity and rationalized by
science), to force the working masses to toil as they have been doing,
which leads directly to re-establishment of the State in its most natural
form, that is, the form of a military dictatorship or rule by an Emperor
or the working masses will throw off the hateful, age-long yoke, and will
destroy to its very roots bourgeois exploitation and bourgeois civilization
based upon that exploitation; and that would mean the triumph of the
Social Revolution, the uprooting of all that is represented by the State.
Thus the State, on the one hand, and social revolution, on the other
hand, are the two opposite poles, the antagonism which constitutes the
very essence of the genuine social life of the whole continent of Europe.
T he New System of Organization. The Social Revolution must put
an end to the old system of organization based upon violence, giving full
liberty to the masses, groups, communes, and associations, and likewise to
individuals themselves, and destroying once and for all the historic cause
of all violences, the power and the very existence o f the State, the down
fall o f which will carry down with it all the iniquities of juridical right,
and all the falsehoods of the diverse religious cultsthat right and those cults
being simply the complaisant consecration (ideal as well as real) of all the
violences represented, guaranteed, and furthered by the State.7
 374 T H E P O L I T I C A L P H I L O S O P H Y *OF B A K U N I N
Within the depths of the proletariat itselfat first within the French
and Austrian proletariat, and then in that o f the rest of Europethere
began to crystalize and finally took shape an altogether new tendency
which aims directly at sweeping away every form of exploitation and
every kind of political and juridical as well as governmental oppression
that is, at the abolition of all classes by means of economic equality and the
abolition of their last bulwark, the State.
Such is the program o f the Social Revolution.
Thus at present there exists in all the civilized countries in the world
only one universal problemthe fullest and final emancipation o f the pro
letariat from economic exploitation and State oppression. It is clear then
that this question cannot be solved without a terrible and bloody struggle,
and that in view of that situation the right and the importance o f every
nation will depend upon the direction, character, and degree of its par
ticipation in this struggle.8
Social Revolution Is International in Character. But social revolution
cannot be confined to a single people: it is international in its very essence.8
Under the historic, juridical, religious, and social organization o f most
civilized countries, the economic emancipation of the workers is a sheer
impossibilityand consequently, in order to attain and fully c a n y out that
emancipation, it is necessary to destroy all modem institutions: the State,
Church, Courts, University, Army, and Police, all of which are ramparts
erected b y the privileged classes against the proletariat. And it is not
enough to have them overthrown in one country only: it is essential to
have them destroyed in all countries, for since the emergence of modem
Statesin the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesthere has existed among
those countries and those institutions an ever-growing international soli
darity and powerful international alliances,
Revolutions Cannot Be Improvised. Revolutions are not improvised.
T h ey are not made at will b y individuals, and not even b y the most power
ful associations. T h ey come about through force of circumstances, and
are independent of any deliberate will or conspiracy. T h ey can be fore
seen . . . but never can their explosion be accelerated.11
T h e Role of Individuals in the Revolution. T h e time of great politi
cal personalities is over. W hen it was a question o f waging political revolu
tions, those individuals were in their place. Politics has for its object the
foundation and preservation o f the States; but he who says the State
says domination on one hand and subjection on the other. Great dominant
individuals are absolutely necessary in a political revolution; in a social
revolution they are not only useless, they are positively harmful and are
incompatible with the foremost aim of that revolution, the emancipation
of the masses. A t present, in revolutionary action as in modem labor, the
collective must supplant the individual.12
In a social revolution, which is diametrically opposed in every w ay to
375 Revolution and Revolutionary Violence
a political revolution, the actions o f individuals are virtually null while
the spontaneous action o f the masses should be everything. A ll that individ
uals can do is to elaborate, clarify, and propagate ideas corresponding to
the popular instinct and contribute their incessant efforts to the revolu
tionary organization of the natural power o f the masses, but nothing over
and above that; the rest can and should be done b y the masses themselves.1*
Organization and Revolution. [As to organization, it is necessary]
in order that when the Revolution, brought about through the force o f
circumstances, breaks out in full power, there be a real force in the field,
one that knows what should be done and b y virtue thereof capable o f
taking hold o f the Revolution and giving it a direction salutary for the
people; a serious international organization of workers associations in all
countries, capable o f replacing the departing political world o f the States
and the bourgeoisie.14
Universal public and private bankruptcy is the first condition fo r a
social-economic revolution.1
Preliminary Conditions of a Revolution. But States do not crumble
by themselves; they are overthrown b y a universal international social
organization. And organizing popular forces to carry out that revolution-
such is the only task o f those who sincerely aim at emancipation.1*
Industrial Workers and Peasants in the Revolution. The initiative in
the new movement will belong to the people . . . in Western Europe, to
the city and factory workersin Russia, Poland, and most of the Slavic
countries, to the peasants.17
But in order that the peasants rise up, it is absolutely necessary that the
initiative in this revolutionary movement be taken b y the city workers, for
it is the latter who combine in themselves the instincts, ideas, and conscious
will o f the Social Revolution. Consequently, the whole danger threatening
the existence of the States is focused in the city proletariat.1*
Revolution: An Act of Justice. The social transformation to which
we whole-heartedly aspire is the great act of justice, finding its basis in
the rational organization o f society with equal rights for all.1*
Nowhere is the [Social] Revolution so near as in Italy, not even in
Spain, where an official revolution is now taking place, while in Italy
everything seems quiet. In Italy the whole populace awaits the social up
heaval, and is consciously aiming toward it.80
T h e Proximity of Social Revolution. Neither Spain nor Italy can be
expected to embark upon a policy of foreign conquests; on the contrary,
one can expect a social revolution [in both countries] in the near future.21
In England the Social Revolution is much nearer than it is generally
thought, and nowhere will it assume such a terrible character, because in
no other country will it meet with such a desperate and well-organized
resistance as in England.22
One can confidently say that the need for an economic and social
 376 THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF BAKUNIN

revolution is at present strongly felt by the masses of people in Europe,

even in the less civilized countriesand it is precisely this which gives us
faith in the near triumph o f the Social Revolution. For if the collective
interest o f the masses did not pronounce itself so clearly, profoundly, and
resolutely in this sense, no Socialists in the world, not even if they were
men o f the most outstanding genius, would be able to arouse those masses.23
Revolutionary Violence: Political Force Has to be Destroyed. Even
profound historians and jurists have not understood the simple truth, the
explanation and confirmation of which they could have read on every
page of history, namely: that in order to render harmless any political force
whatever, to pacify and subdue it, only one w ay is possible, and that is
to proceed 'with its destruction. Philosophers have not understood that
against political forces there can be no other guarantees but complete
destruction; that in politics, as in the arena of mutually struggling forces
and facts, words, promises, and vows mean nothingand that is so because
every political force, while it remains an actual force, even apart from and
contrary to the will o f the kings and other authorities who direct it, must
steadfastly tend toward the realization of its own aims; this b y virtue of
its essential nature and because of the danger of self-destruction.24
Historic Right Is Consecration of Force. Upon assuming office, Chan
cellor Bismarck held a discourse in which he set forth his program [saying
among other things that] Great State problems are decided not by right
but b y force, force always antedating right.
Freedom Is Won by Force. Bismarck, with his usual boldness, cyni
cism, and scornful candor, expressed in these words the essence o f the
political history of nations, the arcanum of State wisdom. The predomi
nance and the abiding triumph of forcethat is the real core o f the matter,
and all that is called right in the language of politics is only the consecra
tion of fact created b y force, ft is clear that the people, longing for eman
cipation, cannot expect it from the theoretical triumph of abstract right;
they must win liberty b y force, for which purpose they must organize
their powers apart from and against the State.25
Power of Reaction Should Not Be Underestimated. The unprece-
dently easy triumph of popular rebellions over the troops in nearly all the
capitals o f Europe, which signified the beginning o f the revolution o f
1848, had a bad effect upon revolutionaries not only in Germany but in all
other countries, for it gave rise to foolish confidence which made them
regard the slightest demonstration of force by the people as sufficient to
break down the resistance of any military power. Because o f this the Prus
sian, and in general the German democrats and revolutionists, believing
themselves ever able to hold the government in a state of permanent fright
b y threatening it with a popular rebellion, did not see that it was necessary
to organize, direct, and intensify the revolutionary passions and forces of
the people.
377 Revolution and Revolutionary Violence
Bourgeois Democrats Fear Popular Revolution. On the contrary, the
most revolutionary o f them, as it behooves any well-behaved bourgeois,
feared those passions and forces, and when it came to a showdown, they
proved themselves ready to take the side of the State and the established
order; and they generally agreed that the less frequently they fell back upon
this dangerous expedient o f popular rebellion, the better it would be for
them.
Thus the official revolutionists o f Prussia and Germany scorned the
only means they had available to achieve a final and effective victory over
the emergent reaction. N ot only did they overlook this problem o f organ
izing a popular revolution, but they even bent their efforts to hold it back
and subdue it, thus wrecking the only potent weapon at their disposal.26
Can Justice Be Obtained W ithout Force? And be on guarda ques
tion reduced to terms of force remains a doubtful question.
But if force cannot obtain justice for the proletariat, what is capable o f
obtaining it? A miracle? W e do not believe in miracles, and those who
speak to the proletariat o f such miracles are liars and corrupters. Moral
propaganda? The moral conversion of the bourgeoisie under the influence
of Mazzinis sermons? But it is utterly wrong on the part o f Maz-
zini, who certainly should know history, to speak of such a conversion and
to lull the proletariat with those ridiculous illusions. W as there ever, at
any period, or in any country, a single example of a privileged and domi
nant class which granted concessions freely, spontaneously, and without
being driven to it by force or fear?
Awareness of the Justice of a Cause Is Not Sufficient. The awareness
o f the justice of its own cause is no doubt vital to the proletariat in order
to organize its own members into a power capable of attaining a triumph.
And the proletariat now does not lack this awareness. W here such aware
ness is still lacking it is our duty to build it up among the workers; that
justice has become incontestable even in the eyes o f our adversaries. But
the mere consciousness of such justice is not sufficient. It is necessary that
the proletariat add to it the organization o f its own forces, for the time is
passed when the walls of Jericho would crumble at the blowing o f trum
pets; now force is necessary to vanquish and repulse other force.27
Humaneness in Revolutionary Tactics. W e say to the workers: The
justice o f your cause is certain; only scoundrels can deny it. W hat you
lack, however, is the organization o f your own forces. Organize those
forces and overthrow that which stands in the way of the realization of
your justice. Begin by striking down all those who oppress you. And then,
after having assured your victory and having destroyed the power o f your
enemies, show yourselves humane toward the unfortunate stricken-down
foes, henceforth disarmed and harmless; recognize them as your brothers
and invite them to live and work alongside o f you upon the unshakable
foundation o f social equality.28
 378 THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF BAKUNIN

Organization Is Necessary. The workers are great in number but

numbers mean nothing if forces are not organized.29
And, indeed, what do we see? Spontaneous movements o f the masses
of peopleand very serious movements like that of Palermo in 1866 and
the even more formidable movement of the peasants in many provinces
against the iniquities of the law of macinato (tax upon flour-grinding)
never found any sympathy, or very little of it, among this revolutionary
youth o f Italy. If the latter movement had been well organized and directed
b y intelligent people, it might have produced a formidable revolution.
Lacking organization and leadership, it ended in a fiasco.30
Workers Are Socialists by Their Class Instinct. Fortunately the pro
letariat o f the cities, not excepting those who swear b y the names of
Mazzini and Garibaldi, never could let itself be completely converted to
the ideas and cause of Mazzini and Garibaldi. And the workers could not
do it for the simple reason that the proletariatthat is, the oppressed,
despoiled, maltreated, miserable, starved mass of workersnecessarily pos
sess the logic inherent in the historic role of labor.
Workers may accept the programs o f Mazzini and Garibaldi; but deep
down in their bellies, in the livid pallor of their children and their com
panions in poverty and suffering, in their everyday actual slavery, there
is something which calls for a social revolution* T h ey are all Socialists in
spite o f themselves, with the exception of a few individualsperhaps one
out o f thousandswho, owing to a certain cleverness, to chance or knavery
on their part, have entered, or hope to enter, the ranks of the bourgeoisie.
A ll othersand I am referring to the masses of workers who follow Maz
zini and Garibaldiare such only in their imagination, and in reality they
can be only revolutionary Socialists.
. . . If you will organize yourselves for this purpose throughout Italy,
harmoniously, fraternally, without recognizing any leaders but your own
young collective, I vow to you that within the year there will be no more
Mazzinist or Garibaldist workers; they all will be revolutionary Socialists,
and patriots, too, but in a very human sense of that word. That is, they will
simultaneously be both patriots and internationalists. Thus you will create
an unshakable foundation for the future of the Social Revolution.31
A Social Revolution Must Be a Simultaneous Revolution of City
Workers and the Peasantry. Organize the city proletariat in the name
of revolutionary Socialism, and in doing this, unite it into one preparatory
organization together with the peasantry. A n uprising by the proletariat
alone would not be enough; with that we would have only a political revo
lution which would necessarily produce a natural and legitimate reaction
on the part of the peasants, and that reaction, or merely the indifference
of the peasants, would strangle the revolution of the cities, as it happened
recently in France.
O nly a wide-sweeping revolution embracing both the city workers and
 379 Revolution and Revolutionary Violence
peasants would be sufficiently strong to overthrow and break the organ
ized power of the State, backed as it is by all the resources of the pos
sessing classes. But an all-embracing revolution, that is, a social revolution,
is a simultaneous revolution of the people of the cities and of the peasantry.
It is this kind of revolution that must be organizedfor without a prepara
tory organization, the most powerful elements are insignificant and
impotent.32 . . . The unions create that conscious power without which no
victory is possible.33

C H A P T E R J

Preparatory Period

Y ou write me, my dear friend, that you are the enemy of all statutes
and you maintain that they are fit only for childrens play. I do not alto
gether share your opinion on this point. Excessive regimentation is abhor
rent, and, like you, I believe that serious people should chart the coarse
of their behavior and not swerve from it. Let us, however, try to under
stand each other.*
In order to establish a certain co-ordination in action, one which, in m y
opinion, is necessary among serious people striving toward the same goal,
certain conditions are required, a definite set of rules equally binding upon
all, certain agreements and understandings to be frequently renewed
lacking all that, if everyone is going to work as he pleases, even the most
serious people will find themselves in a position whereby they will neutral
ize one anothers efforts. The result will be disharmony and not the har
mony and serene confidence at which we are aiming.
One has to know how, when, and where to find one another, and whom
to turn to for possible co-operation. W e are not rich, and it is only when
w e unite and co-ordinate our means and joint actions that we shall be
able to create the capital [the power of organization] capable o f competing
with the combined capita! [forces] of our adversaries. A small capital, well
organized, is of greater value than a large but disorganized and ill-applied
capital. [Here capital means the membership.]
I do not want the dictatorship o f one capitalist [member o f the organ
ization] nor of a group of capitalists [a group of members] nor of one
market over another. [By market a tendency, a party, apparently is meant.]
I want to see order and serene confidence in our work, coming not as a
The first four paragraphs in this chapter are from a letter written by Bakunin to
Albert Richard-, no date is given.
 380 T H E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

result of the dictates of a single will, but of a collective, well organized

will o f many of our comrades scattered through many countries. This
means that we must put the secret but powerful action of all interested
parties in place of a government emanating from a single center. But in
order that this decentralization may become possible, it is necessary to
have a real organization, and such an organization cannot exist without a
certain degree o f regimentation, which after all is simply the product of a
mutual agreement or a contract1
T h e Role of a Small Minority. Three men united in an organization
already form, in m y opinion, a serious beginning o f power. W hat will
happen when you succeed in organizing several hundred of your followers
throughout the country? . . . Several hundred well-intentioned young
men, when organized apart from the people, of course do not constitute an
adequate revolutionary force: this also is an illusion which should be left
to Mazzini. And Mazzini himself seems to have become aware of this
truth by now, for now he addresses himself directly to the masses of
workers. But those several hundreds are sufficient to organize the revo
lutionary power of the people.2
The only army is the people, the whole people, in both the cities and the
country. But how to approach these people? In the city you will be inter
fered with b y the government, b y the consorteria, and b y the Mazzinists.
In the country you will meet the priests on your way. Nevertheless, dear
friends, there exists a power which is capable o f overcoming all that. It
is the collective. If you were isolated, if each of you were impelled to act
on his own hook, certainly you would be powerless, but b y being united
and by organizing your own forceshowe ver small they may be in the
beginningsolely for joint action, being led by common thought and com
mon attitude, and b y striving toward a common goal, you will be
invincible.3
A t present, in revolutionary action as well as in work, the collective is
to replace individuals. You should know that when you are organized you
are stronger than all the Mazzinis and Garibaldis in the world. You will
think, live, and act collectively, which, however, will in no way hinder the
full development of the intellectual and moral faculties of every individual.
Every one of you will contribute his own abilities, and in uniting you
increase your value a hundred-fold. Such is the law of collective action.4
T he Spirit of Rebellion. The sentiment of rebellion, this Satanic
pride, which spurns subjection to any master whatever, whether of divine
or human origin, alone produces in man a love for independence and
freedom. . . ,6
Destructive Character of Popular Rebellion. A rebellion on the part
of the people, which b y nature is spontaneous, chaotic, and ruthless, always
presupposes a vast destruction of property. The working masses are ever
ready for such sacrifices: that is w hy they constitute the rude, savage force
381 Methods of the Preparatory Period
capable of heroic feats and of carrying out aims seemingly impossible o f
realization, and that is so because, having very little or no property, they
have not been corrupted by it. W hen the exigencies o f defense or victory
demand it, they will not stop at the destruction o f their own villages and
cities, and inasmuch as property in most cases does not belong to the
people, they very often evince a positive passion for destruction.
R ole of the Destructive Passion. This negative passion, however, is
far from rising to the great height o f the revolutionary cause; but without
that passion the revolutionary cause is impossible o f realization, for there
can be no revolution without a sweeping and passionate destruction, a
salutary and fruitful destruction, since by means o f such destruction new
worlds are born and come into existence.6
Destruction Is Correlative W ith the Constructive Aspects of Revo
lution. [But] no one can aim at destruction without Laving at least a
remote conception, whether true or false, of the new order which should
succeed the one now existing; the more vividly that future is visualized, the
more powerful is the force o f destruction. And the nearer that visualization
approaches the truth, that is, the more it conforms to the necessary devel
opment o f the present social world, the more salutary and useful are the
effects o f the destructive action. For destructive action is ever determined
not only its essence and the degree o f its intensity, but likewise the means
used b y itby the positive ideal which constitutes its initial inspiration,
its soul.7
Workers* Organizations Are Not Centers of Conspiracies. If the In
ternational were made up o f central sections only, the latter probably would
have succeeded by now in forming some conspiracies for the overthrow o f
the existing order of things. But those conspiracies would be confined to
mere intentions, being too impotent to attain their goal since they would
never be able to draw in more than a very small number of workersthe
most intelligent, most energetic, most convinced, and most devoted among
them. The vast majority, the millions o f proletarians, would remain outside
of such conspiracies, yet, in order to overthrow and destroy the political
and social order which now crushes us, it will be necessary to have the
co-operation of those millions.8
The now dominant system is strong not because o f its idea and intrinsic
moral forceof which it is totally devoidbut because of the whole organi
zation of the State, mechanical, bureaucratic, military, and police, and by
virtue of the science and the wealth o f the classes interested in backing it.
And one of Mazzinis abiding and most ludicrous illusions is precisely the
fancied idea that it is possible to smash this power with the aid of a few
handfuls o f poorly armed young men. He holds onto and must hold onto
this illusion, for inasmuch as his system precludes him from having recourse
to a revolution waged by the great masses of people, no other way of action
is left to him but conspiracies b y handfuls o f young people.9
 382 THE PO L IT IC A L P H ILO SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

This youth should now have the courage to recognize and proclaim its
complete and definite break with politics, with conspiracies, and with the
republican enterprises of Mazzini, under the pain of seeing itself annihilated
and doomed to inertia and shameful helplessness.10
Economic Struggle Is the Prime Question; Strikes; Co-operation.
The people, guided by their admirable sound sense as well as by their in
stincts, have realized that the first condition of their real emancipation, or
of their humanization, was before all else a radical change in their economic
situation. The question o f daily bread is, justly, to them the prime question,
for as it was noted by Aristotle, man, in order to think, in order to feel
himself free, in order to become man, must be freed from the material cares
o f daily life. For that matter, the bourgeois, who are so vociferous in their
outcries against the materialism of the people and who preach to them the
abstinences of idealism, know it very well, for they themselves preach only
by word and not b y example.
The second question arising before the peoplethe question o f leisure
after workis the sine qua non o f humanity; but bread and leisure never
can be obtained apart from a radical transformation of existing society, and
that explains w h y the Revolution, impelled b y the implications of its own
principles, gave birth to Socialism.u
Apart from the great question o f the final and complete emancipation
o f the workers by the abolition of the right of inheritance, o f political States,
and by the organization of collective property and production, as well as
b y other ways which subsequently will be passed upon by the Congress
[of the International], the Section of the Alliance will undertake the study
of and will try to put into practice all the provisional means or palliatives
which might alleviate, at least in part, the existing situation of the workers.12
T he prime question for the people is its economic emancipation, which
necessarily and directly engenders its politicaland following thatits in
tellectual and moral emancipation. Therefore we fully subscribe to the
resolution adopted b y the Congress in Brussels (1867):
Recognizing that for the moment it is impossible to organize a ra
tional system o f education, the Congress urges its various sections to organ
ize study courses which would follow a program of scientific, professional,
and industrial educationthat is, an integral programin order to remedy
as much as possible the lack o f education among workers. And, o f course,
it stands to reason that a reduction of working hours is to be considered
an indispensable preliminary condition. 18
The Alliance o f which I hereafter will speak is wholly different from
the International Social Democratic Alliance [which Bakunin declared had
committed suicide]. It is no longer an international organization; it is the
separate Section of the Social Democratic Alliance of Geneva, recognized
in July, 1869, by the General Council as the regular section of the Inter-
383 Methods o f the Preparatory Period
national. . . . The best answer w e can make to our detractors, to those
who dare to say that w e wish to dissolve the International Workingmens
Association is to [quote here] from the new rules:
. . Article V . T he steadfast and real exercise o f practical solidarity
among the workers o f all trades, including, o f course, the workers on the
land, is the surest guarantee o f their impending deliverance. T o observe
this solidarity in the private and public manifestations of the life of the
workers and in their struggle against bourgeois capital shall be considered
the supreme duty o f every member o f the Section o f the Social Democratic
Alliance. A n y member who fails to observe this duty shall be immediately
expelled. 14
But without letting themselves be led astray b y the siren voices of the
bourgeoisie and of the bourgeois Socialists the workers, above all, should
concentrate their efforts upon this great question o f econom ic emancipa
tion, which should be the source o f all other emancipation.1*
Revolutionary Significance of Strikes. The dominant news in the
labor movement of Europe can be summed up in one word: strikes. . . . In
the measure that we advance, strikes keep on spreading. W hat does it
mean? It means that the struggle between labor and capital grows more and
more accentuated, that economic anarchy grows with each day, and that
we are marching with gigantic steps toward the inevitable end-point o f
this anarchytoward social revolution. Most certainly the emancipation
of the proletariat could be effected without any violent shocks, if the
bourgeoisie were to have an August 4th* of its own, if it were willing to
renounce its privileges, its escheatage rights o f capital to labor. But bour
geois egoism and blindness are so inveterate that one must be an optimist
even to hope that the social problem will be solved by a common under
standing between the privileged and the disinherited. Therefore it is rather
from the very excess of the present anarchy that the new social order may
be expected to emerge.
T h e General Strike. W hen strikes begin to grow in scope and in
tensity, spreading from one place to another, it means that events are
ripening for a general strike, and a general strike coming off at the present
time, now that the proletariat is deeply permeated with ideas of emancipa
tion, can only lead to a great cataclysm, which will regenerate society.
Doubtless we have not yet come to that point, but everything leads toward
it. O nly it is necessary that the people should be ready, that they should
not permit themselves to be eased out of it b y chatter-boxes, windbags, and
day-dreamers as in 1848, and that is w hy they must build up beforehand a
strong and serious organization.1*

* August 4, 1789, was die date on which the French nobles and the clergy in the
Assembly in Paris purported to renounce their own feudal rights. But a new measure
enacted there that night contained a provision which enslaved the peasants all the more.
 384 THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF BAKUNIN

Strikes T rain Workers or the Ultimate Struggle. W ho does not know

what every single strike means to the workers in terms of suffering and
sacrifices? But strikes are necessary; indeed, they are necessary to such an
extent that without them it would be impossible to arouse the masses for
a social struggle, nor would it be possible to have them organized. Strikes
spell war, and the masses of people become organized only during and by
the means of war, which jolts the ordinary worker out of his humdrum
existence, out of his meaningless, joyless, and hopeless isolation. W ar makes
him band together with all the other workers in the name of the same
passion and the same goal; it convinces all workers in the most graphic
and perceptible manner o f the necessity of a strict organization to attain
victory. The aroused masses o f the people are like molten metal, which
fuses into one continuous mass, and which lends itself to shaping much
more easily than non-molten metalthat is, if there are good craftsmen who
know how to mold it in accordance with the properties and instrinsic
laws of a given metal, in accordance with the peoples needs and instincts.
Strikes awaken in the masses all the social-revolutionary instincts which
reside deeply in the heart o f every worker, which constitute, so to speak,
his socio-physiological existence, but which ordinarily are consciously per
ceived by very few workers, most of whom are weighed down b y slavish
habits and a general spirit of resignation. But when those instincts, stimu
lated b y the economic struggle, awaken in the heartened multitudes of
workers, the propaganda o f social-revolutionary ideas becomes quite easy.
For these ideas are simply the purest and most faithful expression of the
instincts of the people. If they do not correspond to those instincts, they
are false; and in so far as they are false they will necessarily be rejected
by the people. But if such ideas come as an honest expression of the
instincts, if they represent the genuine thought o f the people, they will
quickly pervade the minds of the multitudes in rebellion; and once those
ideas find their w ay to the minds of the people, they will sw iftly proceed
toward their full actualization.17
E very strike is the more valuable in that it broadens and deepens to an
ever greater extent the gulf now separating the bourgeois class from the
masses of the people; and in that it proves to the workers in the most per
ceptible manner that their interests are absolutely incompatible with the
interests of the capitalists and property-owners. Strikes are valuable be
cause they destroy in the minds of the now exploited and enslaved masses
of people the possibility of any compromises or deals with the enemy; they
destroy at its roots that which is called bourgeois Socialism, thus keeping
the cause of the people free from any entanglements in the political and
economic combinations of the propertied classes. There is no better means
of detaching the workers from the political influence of the bourgeoisie
than a strike.10
Yes, strikes are of enormous value; they create, organize, and form a
385 Methods of the Preparatory Period
workers army, an army which is bound to break down the power of the
bourgeoisie and the State, and !ay the ground for a new world.19
T h e Co-operative Movement; Tw o Kinds of Co-operatives. You know
there are two kinds o f co-operation: bourgeois co-operation, which tends
to create a privileged class, a sort of new collective bourgeoisie organized
into a stockholding society; and truly Socialist co-operation, the co-opera
tion o f the future which for this very reason is virtually impossible of
realization at present.20
Whereas the revolutionary Socialists, convinced that the proletariat can
not free itself under present conditions o f the economic order of society,
demand the social liquidation, and chiefly the abolition of personal and
hereditary property, the peaceful Socialists want, on the contrary, to pre
serve all the principal and essential bases o f the existing economic order,
maintaining that even under this social order and conditions necessary for
the success of bourgeois civilization, the workers can free themselves and
substantially improve their material position, solely b y the miraculous
power of free association.21
Therefore they hold out to the workers the formation of mutual aid
societies, labor banks, and consumers and producers co-operative associa
tions as the only means of salvation. A t the same time they implore the
workers not to believe the revolutionary Utopians who, forsooth, promise
them impossible equality and who consciously or unconsciously drag them
on toward ultimate ruin and perdition.22
T h e Lessons of Co-operative Movements. The experience of twenty
years in England, France, and Germanythe only extensive experience
which the co-operative movement can show to its credithas finally proven
that the co-operative system, which carries within itself the germ of the
future economic order, cannot free or even substantially improve the situ
ation of the toilers under present conditions. The renowned association of
the Rochdale workers in England, which made so much of a stir and
impelled so many attempts to copy it in other countries, ended by creating
a new collective bourgeoisie which makes no bones about exploiting the
mass of workers who do not belong to its co-operatives.23
The English workers, with their practical common sense, already have
come to see the impossibility of putting into practice the co-operative
system under the existing conditions of the predominance of bourgeois
capital in the process of production and distribution of wealth. Taught by
experience, the mass of the advanced and most energetic workers [in Eng
land] are now joining the so-called trade-unions, formed not for the ulti
mate organization of production, which is not yet possible under present
conditions, but for the organization of toilers against the privileged world
of fine gentlemen. 2*
From Go-operatives Toward M ilitant Labor Organizations. In Ger-
 386 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
many now there are 5,000 workers associations of all kinds, formed mainly
by Schulze-Delitzsch, Hirsh, Dunker, and other followers of Schulze. And
now that we have had the experience of so many years, we can say that
the result of their existence is practically nil. The situation of the workers
in Germany has not been improved the least bit; on the contrary, con
forming to a certain economic law, according to which the poverty of the
working-class grows in the same measure that bourgeois capital grows and
becomes concentrated in fewer hands, the situation of the workers in
Germany, and likewise in all the other countries, has grown considerably
worse.26
A t present the greater majority of German workers have turned their
backs upon the Schulze-Delitzsch and Max Hirsh type of co-operatives, and
are joining in great numbers militant, fighting organizationsthe old
Lassallean or the new Social-Democratic Association.26
Economically speaking, the Schulze-Delitzsch system, as is quite evi
dent now, tended directly to preserve the bourgeois world against the
oncoming storm; and in a political sense it tended to subject the prole
tariat to the exploiting bourgeois and to keep it in the position of an
obedient and senseless tool of the latter.27
Lassalles Criticism. It was against this crude, two-fold deception that
Ferdinand Lassalle arose in arms. He had no great difficulty in demolishing
the economic system of Schulze-Delitzsch and in showing the insignificance
of his political system. N o one but Lassalle could explain and prove so
convincingly to the German workers that under existing economic condi
tions the situation of the proletariat could not be improved in any respect,
but that it was bound to grow worse b y virtue of the inevitable economic
law, despite the attempts of various co-operatives which might yield some
short-lived benefits to a very small number of workers.
In demolishing the political program of Schulze-Delitzsch, Lassalle
proved that all this quasi-popular politics tends only to consolidate the
economic privileges of the bourgeoisie.28
In France the co-operative system went completely on the rocks.29
N o one thinks of and no one believes any more in co-operatives as a
means of salvation, and all the workers' associations extant in France are
going through a great change and are banding together into a vast federated
union for revolutionary struggle against capital.30
Liberal Economists and Scientific Socialists Concur in T heir Criticism
of Co-operatives; Agree T h at They Cannot Withstand Competition of
Big Capital. Peaceful, bourgeois co-operative Socialism is everywhere
doomed and has by now become virtually extinct. Experience has shown
that it cannot be realized. And prior to that theoretical analysis had shown
its impossibility.
387 Methods of the Preparatory Period
T h e serious economists of the two opposing schoolsthe liberal school
and that of scientific Communistswho differ on all other points and
agree only upon one point, have long ago stated their conviction (one
based upon real science, that is, upon a rigorous study o f the co-operative
movement and the development of economic facts) that under the present
organization o f the social economy and production of commodities, and
the increase, dominant control, and concentration o f capita! necessarily
resulting from this organization of economy, no efforts on the part o f
labor associations will be able to free labor from the oppressive yoke of
capital; and that labor banks, fed only b y the meager savings of the
toilers, will never be able to withstand the competition o f the powerful,
international, bourgeois, oligarchic banks.
T hey have long since concluded also that with the steady increase of
the supply of labor and hungry stomachs, (an increase accelerated as a
result of the concentration of capital into fewer hands and the concomi
tant proletarianization of the lower and even the middle layers of the
bourgeoisie) the workers, in order to escape death from starvation, are
bound to compete against one another, driving wages down to the lowest
point required for their maintenance and subsistence; and that therefore aU
worker-consumers associations, by diminishing the prices of the chief items
in their budget, must invariably cause the driving down of the wage scale,
thus making worse the situation of the workers.
The economise likewise have proved that producers associations are
feasible only in those branches of industry which have not yet been taken
over by big capital, because no labor association can compete with the
latter in the large-scale production of commodities. And inasmuch as big
capital, b y virtue of its inherent necessity, strives to put all branches o f
industry under its exclusive control, the ultimate fate o f the producers
associations will be the same as that of the petty and middle bourgeoisie:
inevitable general misery and slavish subjection to bourgeois oligarchic
capital, and the absorption o f every kind of small and middle sized prop
erty b y the large-scaled property of the few hundreds of fortunate persons
throughout Europe.31
T h e Iron Law of Wages. The freedom to exploit the labor of the
proletariat, forced to sell itself to capital at the lowest possible price,
forced not b y any political or civil law whatever, but b y the economic
position in which the workers find themselves, and by the apprehension
and fear o f hunger; this freedom, I say, does not fear the competition of
workers associationswhether producers* or consumers or mutual credit
and that is so for the simple reason that workers associations, reduced
*388 T H E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
to their own means, will never be able to build up the necessary capital
capable o f fighting bourgeois capital.32
The consumers societies, organized on a small scale, can contribute
their small share toward the amelioration of the hard lot of the workers;
but as soon as they start growing, as soon as they succeed in lowering the
prices o f articles of prime necessity, there will come as an inevitable result
a drop in the wage scale.33
Political Alliances and Blocs; Class Collaboration: A t W hat Price?
Confidence produces union, and union creates powerThese are truths
which no one will attempt to deny. But in order that these truths shall
prevail, it is necessary to have two things: it is necessary that confidence
should not turn into folly, and that the union, equally sincere on all sides,
should not become an illusion, a falsehood, or a hypocritical exploitation
of one party b y another. It is necessary that all the united parties com
pletely forgetnot forever, o f course, but for the duration of this union
their particular and necessarily opposing interests, the aims and interests
which divide those parties in ordinary times; and that they become ab
sorbed in the pursuit o f the common purpose.
Otherwise, what will be the possible outcome? The sincere party neces
sarily becomes the victim, and the dupe of another party which is less
sincere or which completely lacks sincerity, and it will be sacrificed not to
the triumph of the common cause but to the detriment o f that cause, and
for the exclusive benefit of that party which will have hypocritically
exploited this union.34
In order that the union should be feasible and real in character, is it not
necessary that the aim in the name of which the parties have to unite be
the same? And hi this the case at present? Can it be said that the bourgeoisie
and the proletariat want absolutely the same thing? N ot at all!35
It is clear that the revolutionary Socialist section of the proletariat can
not ally itself with any faction, not even the most advanced faction, of
bourgeois politics without immediately becoming, against its own will, an
instrument of that politics.36
If the bourgeoisie and the proletariat of France pursue not only differ
ent but absolutely opposing purposes, b y what miracle could a sincere
and real union be established between them? It is clear that this so highly
extolled and ardently advocated conciliation will be nothing but a sheer
lie. It was this He which destroyed France; can it be hoped that it will
bring France back to life? Much as this division may be condemned, it
nevertheless will not cease to exist in fact. And since it does exist, since it
is bound to exist by the very nature o f things, it would be puerile, I
should even say fatal, from the point of view of Frances salvation, to
deny it, and not to recognize openly its existence. And also, since the
safety of France calls upon you for union, forget, sacrifice all your inter
ests, all your ambitions and all your personal divisions; forget and sacrifice,
 389 Methods of the Preparatory Period
as much as it is possible, all the party differences; but in the name of this
salvation steer clear o f any illusions, for in this given situation illusions
would be deadly. Seek union only with those who want just as seriously
and passionately as yourselves to save France at any price.*7
W hen a great danger has to be met, is it not better to march against it
in small numbers but with the certainty of not being abandoned in the
moment of struggle, rather than be trailed b y a multitude o f false allies
who will betray you on the first battlefield?38

C H A P T E K 6 Jacobins o f 1870 Feared

. . . The Imperial administration [of Napoleonic France in 1870] could

not be destroyed with a single blow, because it would be impossible to
replace it immediately with another. It that were to be attempted, there
would ensue, in the midst o f a terrible danger, a more or less prolonged
interval during which France would find itself without any administration,
and consequently with no trace of governmentan interval in which the
French populace, completely abandoned to itself, would become a prey
to the most horrible anarchy. This might suit us all rightus, the revolu
tionary Socialistsbut it does not enter into the plans o f the Jacobins,
State partisans beyond compare*1
In order to obviate this evil, Gambetta will no doubt send into all
Departments [French provinces] proconsuls, extraordinary commissars en
dowed with complete powers.2
Sources of Revolutionary Strength of the Jacobins of 179 S. It is now
enough, [however], to be endowed with extraordinary powers in order
to take extraordinary measures for public safety, in order to have the power
to create new forces, to stimulate in a corrupted administration and within
a populace systematically weaned away from any initiative, a salutary
energy and activity. For that it is necessary also to possess what the bour
geois of 1792-1793 possessed to a high degree and what the bourgeoisie o f
today absolutely lackseven its most radical representatives, the present-
day republicans. In order to do that it is necessary to have revolutionary
mind, will, and energy; it is necessary to have a demon within the flesh .
Apart from those personal qualities, which put a truly heroic imprint
upon the men of 1793, the success of the extraordinary commissars of the
 390 TH E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

Jacobins National Convention was due to the fact that that convention in
itself was genuinely revolutionary, and because, while depending in Paris
upon the masses o f the people, upon the vile populace* to the exclusion o f
the liberal bourgeoisie, it ordered ail its proconsuls dispatched to the prov
inces to base themselves everywhere and always in their work upon the
same rabble.3
T he Commissars of the Great Revolution. T h e antagonism between
bourgeois revolution and popular revolution did not yet exist in 1793; it
existed neither in the consciousness of the people nor even in the con
sciousness of the bourgeoisie. Historic experience had not yet brought out
the timeless truth which states that the freedom of every privileged class-
including, of course, that of the bourgeoisis essentially based upon the
economic slavery of the proletariat. This truth has always existed as a
fact, as a real consequence, but it was so greatly obscured b y other facts
and masked by so many interests and varied historical tendencies, (especi
ally religious, national, and political tendencies), that it did not yet stand
out in its great simplicity and present-day clarity, neither for the bour
geoisie, who invests money in enterprises, nor for the proletariat, whom
the bourgeoisie exploits.
The bourgeoisie and the proletariat have always been natural, eternal
enemies without being aware of it, and because of this ignorance they
attributedthe bourgeoisie its fears and the proletariat its woesto ficti
tious causes and not to their real antagonisms. T h ey believed themselves
to be friends, and because o f that belief they all marched united against
the monarchy, against the nobility, and against the priests. It was that
which gave the bourgeois revolutionists of 1793 their great power. N o t
only were they not afraid to unleash popular passions, but they fomented
such passions b y all means at their disposal as the only w ay to save the
country and themselves from foreign and domestic reaction.
W hen an extraordinary commissar delegated b y the Convention ar
rived in a province he never addressed himself to the big-wigs of that
region nor to the revolutionaries in white gloves; he devoted himself to the
sansculottes, to the rabble, and it was upon these elements that he depended
in order to carry out, against the will of the big-wigs and the well-bred
revolutionists, the revolutionary decrees of the Convention. W hat these
commissars did then was, properly speaking, not in the nature of central
ization nor of building up a new administration; they aimed rather to evoke
a popular movement.
Usually they did not come to any province with the intention of im
posing upon it dictatorially the will of the National Convention. T h ey did
that only on rare occasions, when they went into provinces that were
decidedly and unanimously reactionary and hostile. In such instances they
did not go alone, but were accompanied b y troops who added the argu
ment of the bayonet to their civic eloquence. But ordinarily they went
39i Jacobins of 1870 Feared Revolutionary Anarchy
alone, without a single soldier to back them, and they sought their support
among the masses, whose instincts invariably conformed to the ideas of
the Convention.
Far from restraining the freedom o f popular movements because of
fear of anarchy, the commissars tried to foment it b y all means at their
disposal. T h e first thing they would do was to form a peoples club,
wherever none already existed; being themselves genuine revolutionists,
they easily discovered the true revolutionists among the masses, and united
with them in order to fan the revolutionary flames, to foment anarchy, to
arouse the masses, and to organize along revolutionary lines this popular
anarchy. That revolutionary organization was the sole administration and
the sole executive force of which the extraordinary commissars availed
themselves to revolutionize and terrorize the provinces.4
Such was the true secret o f the power of those revolutionary giants
whom the Jacobin pygmies o f our own times admire without ever suc
ceeding in coming near to them.5
As in 1792 France Could Be Saved from the Prussians Only by a Great
Uprising of the People. The only thing that can save France in the face
of the terrible, mortal dangers which menace it now is a spontaneous, for
midable, passionately energetic, anarchic, destructive, and savage uprising of
the masses of people throughout France.#
A Revolutionary Approach to the Peasants. I believe that right now
in France, and probably in other countries as well, there exist only two
classes capable of such a movement: the workers and the peasants. Do not
wonder that I am speaking of peasants. The peasants, even those of France,
sin only through ignorance and not from lack of temperament N ot having
abused nor even used life, not having felt the deleterious effect of bour
geois civilization, which has affected them only superficially, they have
preserved the energetic temperament, and all the nature of the people.
Property, and the love and enjoyment not of pleasures but of gain, have
made them egoistic to a considerable extent, but they have not abated
their instinctive hatred for the fine gentlemen, and above ail, for the
bourgeois land-owners, who enjoy income from the land without produc
ing it with the work of their own hands. In addition, the peasants are
deeply patriotic, and nationalistic, because they have built a cult around the
land, because they have a passion for it, and I believe nothing should be
easier than to stir them up against the foreign invaders who want to
deprive France o f two vast provinces.7
It is clear that in order to arouse and carry along the peasants it is
necessary to use a great deal of prudence, in the sense that one must beware,
in speaking of them, of enunciating ideas and employing phrases which
exercise an all-powerful effect upon the city workers but which, having
been interpreted for a long time for the peasants b y all sorts of reaction
aries (from the big land-owners to State functionaries and priests) in a
 392 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
manner which made them odious and threatening to the peasants, pro
duced upon them an effect quite contrary to their intent. N o, in speaking
to the peasants one has to use at first the most simple language, words
which correspond best to their instincts and level o f understanding.
In those villages where the platonic and fictitious love for the Emperor
[Napoleon III] really exists as a prejudice and a passionate habit, one
should not even speak against the Emperor. It is necessary to undermine in
fact the power o f the State, and of the Emperor, without saying anything
against himb y undermining the influence, the official organization, and as
much as it is possible, by destroying the persons who act as functionaries
for the Emperor: the mayors, justices of the peace, priests, gendarmes, and
chiefs of village policewho, I believe, can be Septemberized b y arous
ing the peasants against them. It is necessary to tell them that the Prussians
must be driven out of Francethis they will understand perfectly because
they are patriotsand that for this they must arm themselves, organize
themselves into battalions of volunteers, and march against the Prussians.
But before they begin marching it also is necessary that, following the
example of the cities, which have rid themselves o f all exploiting parasites
and which have turned the task of their defense over to the sons of the
people, to the workers,the peasants, too, rid themselves o f the fine gen
tlemen who exploit, dishonor, and exhaust the land by cultivating it with
hired labor and not with their own hands. Then it is essential to arouse
them to defiance of the village notables, the functionaries, and as much as
possible, of the priest himself. Let them take whatever they want in the
Church and of the land belonging to the Churchwherever the latter owns
landand let them take possession of the lands belonging to the State, as
well as o f the estates of the big land-owners, of the rich, utterly useless
parasites.
And then the peasants will need to be told that since everywhere all
payments have been suspended, they also must suspend their payments
payments on private debts, taxes, and mortgagesuntil perfect order has
been established; that otherwise, all the money passing into the hands of
the functionaries would remain with them or would pass into the hands
o f the Prussians. This done, let them march against the Prussians, but first
let them organize, let them unite on the principles o f federation, village
with village, and with the cities too, for mutual support and for joint de
fense against both the foreign and domestic Prussians.8
Class Struggles in the Villages W ill R id the Peasantry of Its Political
Prejudices. Here a question presents itself: The revolution of 1792 and
1793 could give the peasantsnot gratis but at a very low pricethe na
tional estates, that is, the lands belonging to the Church and emigrant noble
men, all of which had been confiscated b y the State. But now, it will be
argued, the Revolution has nothing to give to the peasants. Has it not,
though? Have not the Church and the reSgious orders of both sexes grown
593 Jacobins of 1870 Feared Revolutionary Anarchy
rich again owing to the criminal connivance of the legitimist monarchy,
and above all of the Second Empire?
True, the greater part o f their wealth was very prudently mobilized in
anticipation o f possible revolutions. The Church, which, though preoccu
pied with celestial matters, has never overlooked its material interests,
(being notorious for its shrewd economic speculations), doubtless has
placed the greater part o f its earthly possessions, which it continues aug
menting from day to day for the greater good o f the poor and unfortunate,
in all kinds of commercial, industrial, and banking enterprises, and in pri
vate bonds o f every country.
Thus it would take a veritable universal bank ruptcywhich will come
as the inevitable consequence of a universal social revolutionto deprive
the Church o f that wealth which now constitutes the chief instrument of
its power, alas, that still formidable power. But it remains no less certain
that the Church now possesses, especially in the southern provinces o f
France, vast land holdings, and buildings, as well as ornaments and church
plate which represent veritable treasures in silver, gold, or precious stones.
W ell, all o f that can and should be confiscated, and not for the benefit of
the State but for that o f the communes.*
This then, as I see it, is the only effective w ay o f influencing the
peasants in two directionsin the direction o f defending the country
against Prussian invasion, and in the direction o f destroying the State ap
paratus in the rural communes, where its principal roots are to be found
and consequently, toward the Social Revolution.
It is only by this kind o f propaganda, only b y a social revolution thus
understood, that one can fight against the reactionary spirit o f the villages,
that one can succeed in overcoming it and transforming it into a revolu
tionary spirit.
The alleged Bonapartist sympathies o f the French peasants do not alarm
me. Such sympathies are merely the surface symptoms o f the socialist
instinct led astray by ignorance and exploited by malice, a skin disease
which will yield to the heroic treatment of revolutionary Socialism. The
peasants will not give away their own land, their money, nor their lives
to preserve the power of Napoleon III, but they will willingly give for
that purpose the lives and property of others, because they detest those
others. T hey entertain the utmost, altogether socialistic hatred of men o f
labor against men of leisure, against the fine gentlemen. 10
Antagonism Between Peasants and City Workers Due to Misunder
standing. If we want to be practical, if, tired of day-dreaming, we make
up our minds to fight in earnest in order to bring about a revolution, we
shall have to start by ridding ourselves of a number of doctrinaire, bour
geois prejudices, unfortunately taken over to a great extent from the
bourgeoisie by the city proletariat. The city worker, more highly devel
oped than the peasant, too often despises the latter and speaks of him with
 394 TH E PO L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
an altogether bourgeois contempt Nothing is more irritating than disdain
and contemptthat is w hy the peasant answers this contempt on the part
of the industrial workers with hatred. And this is nothing short of a mis
fortune, for such contempt and hatred divide the people into two camps,
each of which paralyzes and undermines the other. Between these two
parties there are in fact no conflicting interests; there is only a vast and
baneful misunderstanding which should be smoothed out at any price.11
The more enlightened, more civilized Socialism of the city workers, a
Socialism which because o f this very circumstance takes on a somewhat
bourgeois character, slights and scorns the primitive, natural, and much
more savage Socialism o f the villages, and since it distrusts the latter, it
always tries to restrain it, to oppress it in the very name o f equality and
freedom, which naturally makes for dense ignorance about city Socialism
on the part o f the peasants, who confound this Socialism with the bour
geois spirit of the cities. T h e peasant regards the industrial worker as a
bourgeois lackey or as a soldier o f the bourgeoisie and he despises and
detests the city worker as such. He hates the latter so much that he him
self becomes the servant and blind tool of reaction.
Such is the fatal antagonism which hitherto has paralyzed the revolu
tionary efforts of France and o f Europe. W hoever wants the triumph of
the Social Revolution, must first of all smooth out this antagonism. Since
the two camps are divided only by misunderstanding, it is necessary that
one of them take the initiative in explaining and conciliating. The initiative
by right belongs to the more enlightened party; that is, it rightfully be
longs to the city workers. In order to bring about that conciliation, those
workers should be the first to render an account to themselves o f the
nature of the grievances which they have against the peasants. W hat are
their principal grievances?13
There are three of them: the first is that the peasants are ignorant, super
stitious, and bigoted, and that they allow themselves to be led b y priests.
The second grievance is that the peasants are devoted to the Emperor. T h e
third is that the peasants are ardent partisans of individual property.
Feasant Ignorance. True, the French peasants are grossly ignorant.
But is that their fault? Has anyone been concerned about providing them
with schools? And is their ignorance a reason for despising and maltreating
them? If so, then the bourgeois, who without doubt are more learned than
the industrial workers, should have the right to despise and maltreat the
latter; and we know a goodly number o f bourgeois persons who say so,
and who base on this superiority of education their right to dominate the
city workers and to demand subordination from them. W hat constitutes
the greatness of those workers as against the bourgeoisie is not their educa
tion, which is very small, indeed; it is their instinct and the fact that they
stand for justice that make for their incontestable greatness. But do the
peasants lack that instinct for justice? Look well and you will find among
 395 Jacobins of 1870 Feared Revolutionary Anarchy
them this same instinct, though it is manifest in different forms. You will
find in them alongside of ignorance a deep common sense, admirable
shrewdness, and that energy o f labor which spell the honor and the salva
tion o f the proletariat.1*
Religious Bigotry Among the Peasants Can Be Overcome by Correct
Revolutionary Tactics. The peasants, you say, are superstitious and
bigots, and they let themselves be led by the priests. Their superstition is
the product of their ignorance, which is systematically and artifically fos
tered b y all bourgeois governments. For that matter, the peasants are not
so superstitious and bigoted as you make them out to be; it is their wives
that are so. But then are all the wives of the city workers completely free
from the superstitions and doctrines of the Roman Catholic religion?
As to the influence of the priests, it is only skin-deep; the peasants fol
low the priests inasmuch as domestic peace requires it and in so far as it
do not run counter to their interests. Their religious superstition did not
prevent them after 1789 from buying the properties o f the Church which
had been confiscated by the State, despite the curses hurled by the Church
against the buyers as well as against the sellers of its properties. Hence it
follows that in order to destroy definitely the influence o f the priests in the
villages, the Revolution has to do only one thing: to place the interests of
the peasants in a position where they will necessarily clash with the inter
ests of the Church,14
Realism and Sectarianism in the Struggle Against Religion. It has al
ways annoyed me to have to listen not only to the revolutionary Jacobins
but also to the Socialists brought up in the school o f Blanqui and even to
some of our intimate friends who have been indirectly influenced by the
latter school, advancing the completely anti-revolutionary idea that the
coming republic will have to abolish b y decree all public cults and shall
likewise decree the forcible expulsion of all priests. T o begin with, I am
the absolute enemy of a revolution by decrees, which is the application o f
the idea of a revolutionary State and a sequel of it; that is, a reaction dis
guised by revolutionary appearances. As against the system of revolution
ary decrees I oppose the system o f revolutionary action, the only effective,
consistent, and true system. The authoritarian system of decrees, in seek
ing to impose freedom and equality, destroys them. The Anarchist system
of action evokes and creates them in an infallible manner, without the
intervention of any official or authoritarian violence whatever. The first
leads inevitably to the ultimate triumph of an outspoken reaction. The
second system establishes the Revolution on a natural and unshakable
foundation.15
Religion Cannot Be Effectively Fought by Revolutionary Decrees.
Thus, taking this example, w e may say that if abolition of religious cults
and expulsion of priests are going to be decreed by law, you can rest
assured that even the least religious peasant will rise up in defense of the
 396 TH E PO LITIC A L PH ILO SO PH Y OF B A K U N IN

banned colt and the expelled priests; they may do it either because of a
spirit of contradiction, or because a natural and legitimate sentimenta
sentiment which is the foundation o f libertyrises up in the heart of every
man against any imposed measure, even if it be done in the name o f free
dom. One can be sure then that if the cities commit the folly o f decreeing
abolition of religious cults and expulsion of priests, the peasants will take
the side of the priests, will rise in revolt against the cities, and will
become a terrible instrument in the hands of reaction.
But does it follow that the priests should be left in full enjoyment of
their power? N ot at ail. It is necessary to fight against them most ener
getically, not, however, because they are priests, nor because they are
ministers o f the Roman Catholic religion, but because they are Prussian
agents. In the villages as well as in the cities, it should not be the revolu
tionary authorities, not even though they be a Revolutionary Committee
o f Public Safety, that should strike down the priests. It should be the
populace itself (the workers in the cities and the peasants in the villages)
which takes action against the priests, while the revolutionary authorities
outwardly protect them in the name of respect for freedom of conscience.
Let us copy the wisdom of our adversaries. See, for instance, how all
governments expatiate on liberty while being thoroughly reactionary in
their actions. Let the revolutionary authorities go easy on phrases, but while
using as moderate and pacific language as possible, let them create the
Revolution.16
In Tim e of Revolution Deeds Count More T han Theories. This is
quite the opposite of what revolutionary authorities in all countries have
hitherto been doing. Most frequently they have shown the greatest vigor
and revolutionary quality in their language, while appearing very mod
erate, if not altogether reactionary, in their acts. It can even be said that
the vigor of their language, in most cases, has served them as a mask with
which to fool the people, to disguise the feebleness and lack of consistency
in their acts. There are people, many of them among the so-called revolu
tionary bourgeoisie, who, by uttering some revolutionary phrases, believe
that they are creating the Revolution, and once they have delivered them
selves of those phrases and precisely because of that fact, they deem it
permissible to be lax in action, to show a fatal inconsistency, and to indulge
in acts of a purely reactionary character. W e, who are truly revolution
aries, must act in quite a contrary manner. Let us speak less o f revolution,
and do a great deal more. Let us leave to others the task o f developing
theoretically the principles of social revolution and content ourselves with
widely applying those principles, with embodying them into facts."
Those among our allies and friends who know me well will perhaps
be astonished at m y using this language, I who have worked so much in
theory, who have shown myself to be a jealous and ferocious guardian of
revolutionary principles. But rimes have changed. A year ago we were
 397 Jacobins o f 18 7 0 Feared Revolutionary Anarchy
preparing for a revolution, which some expected quickly, others at a later
timebut now, whatever blind people may say, w e are in the midst o f
a revolution. Then it was absolutely necessary to hold high the standard
of theoretical principles, and to present those principles in all their purity,
in order to form a party, small in numbers yet consisting exclusively o f
people sincerely, wholly, and passionately devoted to those principles, so
that everyone of us, in time o f crisis, could count upon all the others.
But now the issue is no longer that o f recruiting people for such a
party. W e have succeeded, well or badly, in forming a small party-small
in respect to the number o f persons who are joining this party with full
knowledge of what it stands for, but vast in respect to the great mass of
people whom it represents better than any other party. N o w all o f us
have to embark upon the revolutionary high seas, and henceforth we shall
have to spread our principles not through words, but through actions, for
that is the most popular, the most potent, and the most irresistible form
of propaganda. Let us somehow keep silent about our principles whenever
this may be required by policy; that is, whenever our temporary impotence
in relation to a power hostile to us, demands itbut let us ever be ruthlessly
consistent in our actions. Therein lies the salvation o f the Revolution.18

c h a p t e r 7 Revolution by Decrees
Doomed to Failure

The principal reason w hy all the revolutionary authorities in the world

have accomplished so little toward the Revolution is that they always
wanted to create the Revolution themselves, by their own authority and
by their own power, a circumstance which never failed to produce two
results:
In the first place, it greatly narrowed down revolutionary activity, for
it is impossible even for the most intelligent, most energetic, most candid
revolutionary authority to encompass at once the great number o f ques
tions and interests stirred up b y the Revolution. For every dictatorship
(individual as well as collective, in so far as it is made up of several official
persons) is necessarily very circumscribed, very blind, and is incapable o f
either penetrating the depths or comprehending the scope of the peoples
lives, just as it is impossible for the largest and most powerful sea-going
vessel to measure the depth and expanse of the ocean. Second, every act
 398 TH E PO L IT IC A L P H ILO SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

o f official authority, legally imposed, necessarily awakens within the masses

a rebellious feeling, a legitimate counter-reaction.
W hat should revolutionary authoritiesand let us try to have as few
o f them as possibledo in order to organize and extend the Revolution?
They must not do it themselves, by revolutionary decrees, by imposing
this task upon the masses; rather their aim should be that of provoking the
masses to action. They must not try to impose upon the masses any or
ganization whatever, but rather should induce the people to set up
autonomous organizations. This can be done by gaining influence over
the most intelligent and advanced individuals o f high standing in each
locality, so that these organizations will conform as much as possible to
our principles. Therein lies the whole secret of our triumph.1
Jacobinism of 1793 Should Not Be Copied. W ho doubts that this
work is fraught with immense difficulties? Does anyone think that the
Revolution is childs play, and that it can be carried out without sur
mounting innumerable obstacles? Revolutionary Socialists of our days
could find nothingor almost nothingto imitate in the revolutionary
tactics and proceedings o f the Jacobins of 1793. Revolutionary routine
would ruin them. T h ey should work upon the basis of living experience;
they must create everything anew.2
Peasants' Attachment to Property No Serious Obstacle to Revolution.
T o return to the subject o f the peasantry. I have already said that the
alleged attachment of the peasants to the Emperor does not frighten me.
It is neither a deep nor a real attachment. It is simply a negative expression
of their hatred against the landed gentry and the city bourgeoisie. That
attachment therefore cannot be much in the w ay o f the Social Revolution.
The final and chief argument o f the city workers against the peasants
is the cupidity of the latter, their gross egoism, and their attachment to
individual ownership o f land. The workers who level these reproaches at
the peasants should ask themselves: W h o is not an egoist? W h o in present-
day society is not grasping in the sense of passionately clinging to the little
property he has succeeded in acquiring and which guarantees to him, in the
prevailing economic chaos and in this society which shows no pity for
those who die of starvation, his own existence and that o f his near ones?
The peasants are not Communists, that is quite true; they fear, they
hate the protagonists of the division of property, because they do have
something to hold ontoin their imagination at least, and imagination is a
great power which is generally underestimated in society. The workers,
the great majority of whom do not have any property, are immeasurably
more inclined toward Communism, which is quite natural. The Commu
nism of the workers is just as natural as the individualism of the peasants
there is nothing here deserving of praise on one hand or of scorn on the
other. Both, with their ideas, with all their passions, are the produce of
different environments. And then, are all city workers Communists?
 399 Revolution by Decrees Doomed to Failure
Importance of Correct Tactics Toward the Peasants. There is no
need to grumble nor to scorn or disparage the peasants. It is necessary to
lay down a line of revolutionary conduct which will obviate the difficulty
of proselytizing the peasants and which will not only prevent the individ
ualism o f the peasants from pushing them into the camp of reaction but,
on the contrary, will make it instrumental in the triumph of the Revolution,8
Remember, my dear friends, and keep repeating to yourselves a hun
dred, a thousand times a day, that upon the establishment o f this line of
conduct depends the outcome o f the Revolution: victory or defeat.
Revolutionary Terror Against Peasants Would Be Fatal to Revolution.
You will agree with me that there is no more time left in which to convert
the peasants by means of theoretical propaganda. There remains then, apart
from the means I have already suggested, the following measure: terrorism
by the cities against the villages. This excellent measure is cherished by
all our friends, the workers of the big centers of France, who do not
realize nor even suspect that they have borrowed this instrument o f revo
lution1 was going to say of reactionfrom the arsenal of revolutionary
Jacobinism, and that if they ever have the misfortune to avail themselves of
it, they will thus destroy themselves, and, what is more, they will have
destroyed the Revolution itself. For what would be the inevitable, fatal
consequence of that tactic? Simply that the whole rural population, ten
million peasants, would be swept into the enemy camp of reaction, rein
forcing the latter b y their formidable and invincible masses,4
In this, as in many other respects, I deem the Prussian invasion a veri
table piece of good fortune for France and for world social revolution. If
that invasion had not taken place, and if the Revolution in France were
to occur without such an invasion, the French Socialists themselves would
attempt again, all on their own account, to carry out a revolution to
seize the State. That would be utterly illogical, it would be a fatal step
so far as Socialism is concerned, but the Socialists certainly would make
an attempt at itso greatly are they imbued and permeated with the
principles o f Jacobinism.
Consequently, among other measures o f public safety decreed b y a
convention of city delegates, they would try to impose Communism or
collectivism upon the peasants. T h ey would arouse and arm against them
selves the whole mass of peasants, and in order to put down the peasant
revolt, they would find themselves compelled to have recourse to a vast
armed force, well organized and well disciplined. As a result they would
give an army to the reaction, and would beget, would form a caste of
reactionary militarists, of ambitious generals, in their own midst. The
State machine thus reinforced, they would soon have a leader to drive
that machinea dictator, an Emperor. A ll this inevitably would happen,
for it is in the logic o f thingsnot just in the capricious fancy o f an
individualand this logic never errs.8
 4OO T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

Fortunately the events themselves will open the eyes o f the city workers
and will compel them to give up the fatal system which they borrowed
from the Jacobins. One must be mad to want to revert, under the present
circumstances, to terrorism against the peasants. If the peasants rise up
now against the cities, the latter, and France with them, will go down
in ru in .. . . Under existing circumstances, the use o f the terroristic method
so beloved b y the Jacobins, obviously has become impossible. And the
French workers who do not know any other methods are now com
pletely at a loss.
Collectivism Imposed Upon the People Is the Negation of Humanity.
. . . I do not believe that even under the most favorable circumstances the
city workers will have sufficient power to impose Communism or col
lectivism upon the peasants; and I have never wanted this w ay of realizing
Socialism, because I hate every system imposed b y force, and because I
sincerely and passionately love freedom. This false idea and this hope are
destructive o f liberty and they constitute the basic delusion of authori
tarian Communism, which, because it needs the regularly organized vio
lence o f the State, and thus needs the State, necessarily leads to the re-estab
lishment of the principle o f authority and of a privileged class of the State.
Collectivism can be imposed only upon slavesand then collectivism
becomes the negation of humanity. Among a free people collectivism can
come about only in the natural course o f things, by force o f circum
stances, not by imposing it from above, but b y a spontaneous movement
from below, which springs forth freely and necessarily when the condi
tions o f privileged individualismState politics, the codes of civil and
criminal law, the juridical family and inheritance rightshave been swept
away by the Revolution.
Peasant Grievances Against the City Workers. One must be mad, I
have said, to impose anything upon the peasants under present conditions:
it would surely make enemies out of them and surely would ruin the
Revolution. W hat are the principal grievances o f the peasants, the main
causes o f their sullen and deep hatred for the cities?
1. The peasants feel that the cities despise them, and that contempt
is felt directly, even b y the children, and is never forgiven.
2. The peasants imagine, not without plenty of reasons, although lack
ing sufficient historic proofs and experiences to back up those assumptions,
that the cities want to dominate and govern them, that they frequently
want to exploit them, and that they always want to impose upon the
peasants a political order which is very little to the liking o f the latter.
3. In addition, the peasants consider the city workers partisans of divid
ing up property, and they fear that the Socialists will confiscate their land,
which they love above everything else.7
A Friendly Attitude on the Part of the City Workers Necessary to
Overcome the Peasants Hatred. Then what should the city workers do
 40 1 Revolution by Decrees Doom ed to Failure
in order to overcome this distrust and enmity of the peasants toward them
selves? In the first place, they must cease displaying their contempt, stop
despising the peasants. This is necessary for the salvation o f the Revolu
tion and of the workers themselves, for the hatred of the peasants consti
tutes an immense danger. Had it not been for this distrust and hatred, the
Revolution would long ago have become an accomplished fact, for it is
this animosity, which unfortunately the peasants have been showing toward
the cities, that in all countries serves as the basis and the principal force
o f reaction. In the interest of the revolution which is to emancipate the
industrial workers, the latter must get rid of their supercilious attitude
toward the peasants. They also should do this for the sake o f justice, for
in reality they have no reason to despise or detest the peasants. The
peasants are not idling parasites, they are rugged workers like the city
proletariat. O nly they toil under different conditions. In the presence of
bourgeois exploitation, the city workers should feel themselves brothers
o f the peasants. . . .8
Workers Dictatorship Over Peasants a Baneful Fallacy. The peasants
will join cause with the city workers as soon as they become convinced
that the latter do not pretend to impose upon them their will or some
political and social order invented by the cities for the greater happiness
of the villages; they will join cause as soon as they are assured that the
industrial workers will not take their lands away.
It is altogether necessary at the present moment that the city workers
really renounce this claim and this intention, and that they renounce it
in such a manner that the peasants get to know and become convinced o f
it. Those workers must renounce it, for even when that claim and that
intention seemed to lie within the bounds of realization, they were highly
unjust and reactionary, and now when that realization becomes impossible,
it would be no less than criminal folly to attempt it.
B y what right would the city workers impose upon the peasants any
form of government or economic organization whatever? B y the right of
revolution, we are told. But the Revolution ceases to be a revolution when
it acts despotically, when, instead of promoting freedom among the
masses, it promotes reaction. The means and condition, if not the principal
aim o f the Revolution, is the annihilation of the principle of authority in
all of its possible manifestationsthe abolition, the utter destruction, and,
if necessary, the violent destruction o f the State. For the State, the lesser
brother o f the Church, as Proudhon has proven it, is the historic consecra
tion o f all despotisms, o f all privileges, the political reason for all economic
and social enslavement, the very essence and focal point of all reaction.
Therefore, whenever a State is built up in the name o f the Revolution, it
is reaction and despotism that are being furthered and not freedom, it is
the establishment of privilege versus equality that comes as a result thereof.*
T h e Fatal Principle. This is as clear as daylight. But the Socialist
 402 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

workers o f France, brought up in the political traditions o f Jacobinism,

have never wanted to understand it. N o w they will be compelled to
understand it, which is fortunate for the Revolution and for themselves.
Whence this ridiculous as well as arrogant, unjust as well as baneful,
claim on their part to impose their political and social ideal upon ten
million peasants who do not want it? Manifestly this is one more bour
geois legacy, a political bequest o f bourgeois revolutionism. W hat is the
basis, the explanation, the underlying theory of this claim? It is the
pretended or real superiority of intelligence, o f educationin a word, of
workers civilization over that o f the rural population.
But do you realize that with this principle one could easily justify
any kind o f conquest and oppression? The bourgeoisie have always fallen
back upon that principle to prove their mission and their right to govern
or, what amounts to the same thing, to exploit the world of labor. In
conflicts between nations as well as between classes this fatal principle,
which is simply the principle of authority, explains and poses as a right
all invasions and conquests. Did not the Germans always put forth this
principle by w ay of justifying their attempts upon the liberty and inde
pendence of the Slavic peoples, and o f legitimizing the violent and forcible
Germanization of the latter? That, they say, is the victory of civilization
over barbarism.
Beware, the Germans already are remarking that the German Protestant
civilization is much superior to the Catholic civilization o f the peoples of
the Latin race in general, and of the French civilization in particular.
Beware lest the Germans soon imagine that their mission is to civilize you
and to make you happy, just as you now imagine that it is your mission
to civilize and forcibly free your compatriots, your brothers, the peasants
o f France. T o me both claims are equally hateful, and I declare to you
that in international relations, as well as in the relations of one class to
another, I will be on the side of those who are to be civilized in this
manner. Together with them I will revolt against all those arrogant civil
izerswhether they call themselves Germans or workersand in rebelling
against them I shall serve the cause of revolution against reaction.10
T he Hold of Reaction Upon the Peasants Cannot Be Destroyed by
Decrees. But if this is the case, I shall be asked, must we then abandon
the ignorant and superstitious peasants to all kinds o f influences and in
trigues, on the part of reaction? N ot at all! Reaction must be destroyed in
the villages just as it has to be destroyed in the cities. But in order to attain
this goal, it is not enough to say: W e want to destroy,reaction; it must
be destroyed and tom out by its roots, which can be done only by
decrees. On the contraryand I can prove it b y citing historydecrees,
and in general all acts of authority extirpate nothing; they perpetuate that
which they set out to destroy.11
W hat follows? Since revolution cannot be imposed upon the villages,
 403 Revolution by Decrees Doom ed to Failure
it must be generated right there, by promoting a revolutionary movement
among the peasants themselves, leading them on to destroy through their
own efforts the public order, all the political and civil institutions, and to
establish and organize anarchy in the villages.**
But what is to be done? There is only one w ayand that is, to revolu
tionize the villages as much as the cities. But who can do it? The only
class which is now the real outspoken agent o f the Revolution is the
working class of the cities.1*
Workers Delegations Should Not Act as Agents of Bourgeois Repub*
iicanism in the Villages. But how can the city workers undertake the
revolutionizing of villages? Shall they send individual workers into every
village as the apostles o f the Republic? And where would they get the
money necessary to cover the expenses o f this propaganda? True, the pre
fects, the sub-prefects, and the general commissars could send them at the
expense o f the State. But then those emissaries would no longer be dele
gates of the world of labor but of the State, which circumstances would
completely alter their role and the very nature of their propaganda.
The latter would thus become not revolutionary but reactionary in
character, for the first thing they would have to do would be to inspire the
peasants with confidence in the newly established authority o f the Re
public or in those authorities which the Republic retained from the old
regime; that would mean inspiring confidence in the Bonapartist authori
ties, whose baneful activity still weighs heavily upon the villages. However,
it is clear that the prefects, the sub-prefects, and the general commissars,
acting in conformity with the natural law which makes everyone prefer
that which agrees with and not that which is contrary to his nature, would
select for this role o f propagandists for the Republic the least revolutionary,
the most docile, and the most obliging workers. This again would be reac
tion parading under the banner o f labor. But, as we have said, it is only
the Revolution that can revolutionize the villages.14
Finally, it must be added that individual propaganda, even when carried
on b y the most revolutionary people in the world, cannot exercise too
great an influence upon the peasants. T h ey do not respond much to
rhetoric, and words, when they do not come as a manifestation o f force
and are not accompanied b y deeds, remain mere words to them. A worker
who would simply confine himself to haranguing the peasants, would risk
being made the laughing stock o f any village, and being chased out o f it
as a bourgeois.16
 404 T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN

c h a p t e r 8 Revolutionary Program
fo r the Peasants

It is necessary to send free detachments into the villages as propagan

dists for the Revolution.
There is a genera! rule to the effect that those who want to spread the
Revolution by means o f propaganda must be revolutionists themselves.
One must have the Devil within himself in order to be able to arouse the
masses; otherwise there can be only abortive speeches and empty clamor,
but not revolutionary acts. Therefore, above all else the propagandistic
free detachments have to be inspired and organized along revolutionary
lines. T h ey must carry the Revolution within themselves in order to be
able to provoke and arouse it in their listeners. And then they have to
draw up a plan, a line of conduct conforming to the aim which they
have set for themselves.
W hat is this aim? It is not to impose the Revolution upon the peasants,
but to provoke and arouse it among them.1 A revolution that is imposed
upon peoplewhether b y official decree or b y force o f armsis not a revo
lution but its opposite, for it necessarily provokes reaction. A t the same
time, those free detachments must appear in the villages as an impressive
force, capable o f making themselves respected; this show of strength, of
course, is essential not for the purpose o f using violence upon the peasants
but in order to take away any desire to laugh at the detachments or mal
treat them before giving them a chance to make themselves heard, which
is liable to happen to individual propagandists when not accompanied by a
showing of an impressive force. The peasants are somewhat rude and
coarse, and rude natures are easily carried away by the prestige and mani
festations of force, although later they may well revolt against that force
if it imposes upon them conditions which run counter to their instincts
and their interests.2
It is against this that the free detachments must be on their guard. Th ey
are not to impose anything but to stimulate and arouse. W hat they naturally
can and must do at the beginning is to remove anything which stands in
the way o f successful propaganda. Thus their first task should be to break
up without bloodshed the whole municipal administration, which is nec
essarily permeated with Bonapartist if not legitimist or Orleanist elements;
and to seize, deport, or if necessary imprison, the municipal bureaucrats
as well as all the reactionary large property ownersand the priests along
with themfor no other reason than their secret connivance with the Prus
sians, The legal municipal administration should be replaced by a revolu
 405 Revolutionary Program for the Peasants
tionary committee comprising a small number of the most energetic peasants
who are most sincerely converted to the cause of the Revolution.
But before such a committee is set up, it will be necessary to effect a
real change in the sentiments of, if not all o f the peasants, at least those of
a great majority of them. It is essential that that majority become impas
sioned with the idea of revolution. H ow can this miracle be produced? B y
self-interest. The French peasant, we are told, is greedy for gain. And that
cupidity should be harnessed in the interests of the Revolution. It is neces
sary to offer and give him immediately great material advantages *
For there can be only one w ay o f carrying out this program: to speak
to the peasants and push them in the direction of their own instincts. T h ey
love the land; then let them take all o f it and let them chase away all the
proprietors who exploit the labor of others. T h ey are reluctant to pay
mortgages and taxes; so let them stop paying. Let those among them who
do not want to pay their private debts be freed from the necessity of
paying such debts. And finally, the peasants detest conscriptionso let them
be freed from the duty o f furnishing soldiers for the Army.
Revolutionary Self-Interest W ill Impel Peasants to Fight Invaders.
But who will fight the Prussians? Let there be no fear on that score: when
the peasants have felt and perceived the advantages of the Revolution,
they will give more money and people for its defense than it would be
possible to obtain from them b y ordinary State policies or even b y extraor
dinary State measures. The peasants will do against the Prussians what they
did in 1792. For that they must become obsessed with the fury o f resistance,
and only an Anarchist revolution can imbue them with that spirit.
Property as a Simple Fact and Not a Right. But in letting them divide
among themselves the land seized from the bourgeois owners, will this not
lead to the establishment o f private property upon a new and more solid
foundation? N o t at all, for that property will lack the juridical and political
sanction of the State, inasmuch as the State and the whole juridical insti
tution, the defense of property by the State, and family right, including the
law o f inheritance, necessarily will have to disappear in the terrific whirl
wind of revolutionary anarchy. There will be no more political or juridi
cal rightsthere will be only revolutionary facts.4
Property will cease to be a right; it will be reduced to the status of a
simple fact.*
But, you will say, in that case there will be civil war in the country.
For if private property is not going to be guaranteed any more b y any
external political, administrative, juridical, or police power, but is to be
defended only by the efforts of the owners of that property, everyone will
want to take possession o f the property of others, and the stronger will
despoil the weaker.6
But what will prevent the weaker elements from uniting in order to
plunder the stronger?7
 406 TH E PO L IT IC A L PH ILO SO PH Y OF B A K U N IN

T o be sure, at the beginning things will not run altogether smoothly;

there will ensue a period of strife and struggle. Social order, that holy of
holies o f the bourgeoisie, will be disturbed and the primary results flow
ing from this state o f affairs may come very near to what is called civil
war.8
Civil W ar in the Villages Is Not to be Feared. Yes, that ta il be civil
war. But w hy do you attach a stigma to civil war, w h y do you fear it so
much? I am asking this question with history as m y guide: was it civil war
or a social order imposed b y some tutelary government that brought forth
great thoughts, great characters, great nations? Because you were fortunate
in having escaped civil war during the last twenty years, have you, a great
nation, not fallen so low that the Prussians could swallow you in one
mouthful?
T o return to the topic of the villages, I am asking you: Do you want
to see your ten million peasants unite against you in one solid and compact
mass moved b y a common hatred which is brought about by your decrees
and revolutionary violence? O r would you prefer that a wide cleavage be
effected in their ranks by this Anarchist revolution, which will enable you
to build up a powerful party among them? But do you not see that the
peasants are backward precisely because there has not yet come a civil war
with its consequent strife in the villages? Their compact mass is simply a
human herd, hardly capable of development and almost impervious to the
propaganda of ideas. The civil war, on the contrary, b y breaking up that
compact mass, begets ideas, bringing forth a diversity of interests and as
pirations. The peasants do not lack a soul, or human instincts; what they
lack is spirit. T h e civil war will give them this spirit.
That war will open wide the door for the propaganda of your socialist
and revolutionary ideas in the villages. You will have in the villages, I
repeat, a partysomething which you are now lackingand you will be
able widely to organize there a true Socialism, a collectivity inspired and
animated by the ideas of complete liberty; you will organize it from below
upward, b y the action of the peasants themselves, a spontaneous action,
but one that at the same time will be brought about by the lo p e of things.
Your work shall then be true revolutionary Socialism.8
Civil W ar in the Villages W ill Result in a Higher Social Order.
D o not fear that civil war, and anarchy, will lead to the destruction o f the
villages. There is in every society a great deal of the instinct of self-
preservation, o f the power o f collective inertia, which safeguards it against
the danger of annihilation and which precisely renders the progress o f
revolutionary action so slow and difficult. Present-day European society,
in the villages as well as in the citiesin the villages even more than in the
citieshas fallen asleep, has, under the tutelage o f the State, lost all energy,
power, and independence o f thought and action. A few more decades
passed in that condition and this sleep may end in death. . . .
 407 Revolutionary Program for the Peasants
D o not fear that the peasants, once they are not restrained b y public
authority and respect for criminal and civil law, will cut one anothers
throats. T h ey may at first try to do it, but they will not be slow in con
vincing themselves of the practical impossibility o f continuing such a
course, following which they will endeavor to come to a mutual under-
standing, with the view of putting an end to their strife and forming some
kind of an organization. The need o f eating and providing for their chil
drenand consequently the necessity of cultivating the land and contin
uing work in the fields, the necessity of securing the safety o f their houses,
families, and their own lives against unforeseen attacksall that will nec
essarily compel them to enter into some kind of mutual arrangements.
And do not believe that if these arrangements are concluded apart from
the tutelage of any official authority and brought about b y the force of
circumstances, the stronger and wealthier peasants will exercise a predomi
nant influence. Once the wealth of the rich people is not guaranteed by
laws, it ceases to be a power. Rich peasants are now powerful because
they are specially protected and courted b y the functionaries of the State
and became they are backed up by the State. W ith the disappearance of
the State, this backing and power also will disappear. As to the more cun
ning and economically stronger peasants, they will have to give w ay before
the collective power of the peasant mass, of the great number of poor and
very poor peasants, as well as the rural proletariansa mass which is now
enslaved and reduced to silent suffering, but which revolutionary anarchy
will bring back to life and will arm with an irresistible power.10
T h e Implicitly Progressive Role of Civil W ar. Civil war, so baneful
for the power of the States, is on the contrary and b y virtue of this very
cause, always favorable to the awakening of popular initiative and the
intellectual, moral, and even material development of the people. The reason
thereof is quite simple: civil war upsets and disturbs in the masses the
sheepish state so beloved o f all governments, a state turning the people into
herds to be tended and to be shorn at will b y their shepherds. Civil war
breaks up the brutalizing monotony of their daily existence, a mechanical
existence devoid of thought, and compels them to reflect upon the claims
o f the various princes or parties contending for the right to oppress and
exploit the masses of people. And it often leads them to the realizationif
not conscious at least instinctive realizationof the profound truth that
neither one of the contending parties has any claim upon them, and that
both are equally bad.
Besides, from the moment that the peoples collective mind, which is
usually kept in a state of torpor, wakes up at one point, it necessarily asserts
itself in other directions. It becomes stirred up, it breaks away from its
w orldly inertia, and, transcending the confines of a mechanical faith, shak
ing off the yoke of traditional and petrified representations which have
served it in the place of genuine thoughts, it subjects all its idols of yester-
 408 TH E PO L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OP B A K U N IN

day to a passionate and severe criticism, one that is guided b y its own
sound sense and upright conscience, which often are of greater value than
science.
It is thus that the peoples mind awakens. And with the awakening of
that mind comes the sacred instinct, the essentially human instinct of revolt,
the source o f all emancipation; and simultaneously there develop within
the people morality and material prosperitythose twin children o f free
dom. This freedom, so beneficial to the people, finds its support, guaran
tee, and encouragement in the civil war itself, which, by dividing the
forces of the peoples oppressors, exploiters, tutors, and masters, necessarily
undermines the baneful power o f one and the other.11
Civil W ar Does Not Detract From, But Adds to the External Power
of a Nation. But will not this civil war paralyze the defense of France,
even if it proves advantageous from any other points of view? W ill not
this internal struggle among the inhabitants of every community, aggra
vated b y the strife among the communes, deliver France into the hands o f
the Prussians?12
N o t at all. History shows that never did nations feel themselves so
powerful in their foreign relations as when they were deeply agitated and
troubled in their inner life; and on the contrary; never were they so weak
as when they appeared united under one authority or when some kind of a
harmonious order seemed to prevail among them. And this is quite natural:
Struggle is life, and life is power.
T o convince oneself of that, one has only to compare two epochsor
lather four epochsof French history: First, France issuing from the
Fronde, developed and tempered by the struggles of the Fronde, France of
the early reign o f the young Louis X IV as against the France of the last
years of his reign, with the monarchy strongly established, united, and
pacified b y the Great King. Compare the first France, resplendent with vic
tories, with the second France, marching from defeat to defeat, marching
toward ruin.
Likewise compare France o f 1792 with present-day France. In 1792
and 1793 France was tom b y civil war: violent commotion, straggle, a
life-and-death struggle, swept the whole republic. And yet France victori
ously repelled the invasion of nearly all other European powers. [But] in
1870, France of the Empire, united and pacified, was defeated b y the
German armies and became demoralized to such an extent that one must
tremble for its existence.13
 409 O n the M orrow o f the Social Revolution

c h a p t e r 9 On the Morrow o f the

Social Revolution

Phases Passed By Humanity on Its Road to Socialism. Men, pre

eminently carnivorous animals, began their history with cannibalism. N o w
they are aiming at universal association, at collective production and pos
session. But between those tw o points in historic timewhat a ghastly and
bloody tragedy! And the end o f this tragedy is not yet in sight. Following
cannibalism there came slavery; after slavery came serfdom; and that was
followed by the system of wage-labor, after which are to come: first the
terrible day o f justice, and later, much later, the era o f fraternity. Those
are the phases through which must pass the animal struggle for life, a
struggle which in the course o f history gradually becomes transformed
into human organization of life.1
International Union of Humanity Is Ultimate Goal. The future, the
far future, belongs in the first place to the European-American International.
Later, much later indeed, this great European-American nation will merge
organically with the Asiatic and African agglomeration. But that is too
far distant in the future to be discussed here in a positive and precise
fashion.8
Socialism Formulated. Our demand proclaims anew this great prin
ciple of the French Revolution: That every man should have the material
and moral means to develop all of his humanity. That principle, in our
opinion, is to be translated into the following task:
T o organize society in such a manner that every individual-man or
womanshould find, on entering life, approximately equal means for the
development of his [or her] various faculties and for their utilization in
his work; to create a society which would place every individual, whoever
he might be, in such a position that it would be impossible for him to ex
ploit the labor of anyone else, and whereby he would be enabled to par
ticipate in the enjoyment of social wealthwhich in reality is simply the
product o f human laboronly in so far as he contributed directly toward
the production of that wealth.
Liberty Essential to Socialism. Complete solution of this problem
doubtless will be the work of successive centuries. But history has posed
the problem and we cannot ignore it without condemning ourselves to
utter impotence.
W e hasten to add here that we vigorously reject any attempt at social
organization which, being alien to the fullest liberty of individuals as well
 4 1O T H E P O L IT IC A L P H IL O S O P H Y OF B A K U N IN
as of associations, would demand the establishment of a regimenting au
thority, of whatever character it might be. In the name of that freedom,
which we recognize as the only foundation and the only legitimate creative
principle of any organizationwhether economic or politicalwe shall
always protest against anything even remotely resembling State Commu
nism or State Socialism.8
T h e Disappearance of Classes. A ll classes . . . are bound to disappear
in the Social Revolution, with the exception of twothe city and the rural
proletariatwho will become owners, probably collective owners, under
various forms and conditions determined in every locality, in every region
and every commune, by the prevailing degree of civilization in each and
b y the will of the populace. The city proletariat will become the owner
of capital and of implements o f labor, and the rural proletariat of the land
which it cultivates with its own hands; both, impelled by their needs and
mutual interests, will organize, and naturally and necessarily balance each
other in an equal and at the same time perfectly free manner.4
Our program [includes]: . . . The organization of society through a
free federation of workers associationsindustrial and agricultural as well
as scientific, artistic, and literaryfirst into a commune; the federation of
communes into regions, of regions into nations, and of nations into a fra
ternal international union.5
The land belongs to those who have cultivated it with their own hands
to the rural communes. The capital and all tools of labor belong to the
city workersto the workers associations. T h e whole organization of the
future should be nothing else but a free federation of workersagricul
tural workers as well as factory workers and associations of craftsmen.8
Federalist Organization W ill Progress Freely. I do not assert that
the villages reorganized in this manner, freely reorganized from below
upward, will immediately create an ideal organization, conforming in every
respect to the kind of organization which we fancy and o f which we dream.
W hat I am convinced of, however, is that it will be a living organization,
a thousand times superior to and more just than the one existing now.
And moreover, that, while on one hand laying itself open to the active
propaganda of the cities and on the other hand, being of a type of organi
zation which cannot become fixed, or so to speak petrified, by the protec
tion o f the State and by that of the lawsince there will then be neither
State nor law in existenceeach new local organization arising in the vil
lages will be able to progress freely, and to keep on developing indefinitely,
but at the same time ever remaining a living and free organization and not
one brought into existence and sponsored b y decree or b y lawan or
ganization capable of developing to any point that we may hope to achieve
in our days.7
Since life and spontaneous action, suspended for centuries b y the ab
sorbing action of the all-powerful State, are going to be brought back to
 4* i O n the Morrow o f the Social Revolution
the communes by virtue of the abolition of the State, it is natural that
every commune will take for the starting point o f its new development not
the intellectual and moral state ascribed to it b y the official fiction but the
real state of civilization. And since the degree of real civilization differs
widely from one French commune to another, as well as among the com
munes of the rest of Europe, it will necessarily result in a wide latitude of
difference in the rate of progressive development, which may at first lead
to civil war among the communes, and inevitably to their effecting a
mutual agreement, and in the development of a mutual understanding, har
mony, and social equilibrium. There will come a new life and a new
world.8
Integration of Manual and Intellectual Labor. The ideal appears to
the people in the first place as the end of poverty and as the full satisfaction
of all their material needs by means of collective labor, compulsory and
equal for all.8
The isolated labor of the individual mind, as well as o f all intellectual
laborin the field of original research and invention but not of application
should not be paid for. But then how will men of talent, men o f genius,
manage ro live? O f course they will live b y doing manual and collective
labor like all the others. What? You want to submit the great minds to the
indignity o f manual labor, to the same labor as the inferior minds? Yes,
we want it, and for two reasons: First, we are convinced that great minds,
far from losing anything thereby, will on the contrary gain a great deal in
health and mental vigor and above all in the spirit of solidarity and justice.
Second, that this appears to us as the only means to elevate and humanize
manual labor, and thereby establish real equality among men.10
Not Equal Degrees of Learning for All, But a Genera! Scientific Edu
cation and Training. It seems to us that it is a mistake to believe, as some
people do, that following the Social Revolution all will be equally learned.
Science, as is the case at present, will then remain one of the numerous
specialized fields, with this difference, however, that that field, now acces
sible only to persons belonging to the privileged classes, will in the future,
when classes have been totally abolished, become easily accessible to all
having the inclination and the will to devote themselves to it, with no prej
udice toward the manual labor obligatory for all.
O nly general scientific education will become the property of all, and
chiefly soa general knowledge of the scientific method, and training in
scientific thought, that is, the ability to generalize from facts and to draw
from them more or less valid conclusions.11
Labor and Science Both W ill Profit by Integration of Manual and
Mental Work. But, we are asked, if everyone is going to be educated,
who will want to work? Our answer is simple: Everyone 'will work and
every (me tvill be educated. . . . The knowledge of the savant will become
more fruitful, useful, and broader in scope when the scientist ceases to be
 41 2 TH E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN
a stranger to manua! toil, and the labor of the educated worker will be
more intelligent and consequently more productive than that of an ignorant
laborer.
Hence it follows that it is to the interest of both labor and science that
there should be no more workers nor scientists but only men*12
Science in the Transitional Period. It is possible and even probable
that in the more or less prolonged transitional period, which naturally will
follow in the wake o f the great social crisis, sciences o f the highest stand
ing will sink to a level much below those on which they are now.13 . . .
W hat science loses in sublime loftiness, will it not regain b y broadening
its base? W ithout doubt at first there will be fewer illustrious scientists,
but at the same time there will also be fewer ignorant people. There will
be no more of those gifted few who reach for the skies, but instead there
will be millions who, now debased and crushed by the conditions of their
lives, will then bestride the world like free and proud men; there will be
no demi-gods, but neither will there be slaves. The demi-gods and the
slaves alike will become humanized; the former will step down somewhat,
and the latter will rise a great deal. There will be no place for deification
nor for contempt. All will unite and march with fresh vigor toward new
conquests in science as well as in life.14
Absorbing the Vanquished Bourgeoisie in the New Socialist Order.
Socialism will wage a ruthless war upon social positions, but it will not
war against men. And once those positions have been destroyed, the people
who had held them, now disarmed and deprived of any means of action,
will become harmless and much weaker, I assure you, than the most ignor
ant worker; for their present power lies not in themselves as such, nor in
their intrinsic qualities, but in their wealth and in the backing they get
from the State.15
The Social Revolution then will not only spare them, but, having
struck them down and deprived them of their arms, it will raise them up
again and say to them: And now, dear comrades, that you have become
our equals, get ready to work alongside of us. In work, as in everything
else, it is the first step that is difficult, and we will help you in a brotherly
way to overcome that difficulty. Then any persons who, though robust
and of good health, do not want to gain their livelihood by working,
shall have the right to starve themselves to death, that is, if they do not
resign themselves to a humble and miserable existence as wards of public
charity, which certainly will not refuse them their base necessities.16
As to their children, there can be no doubt that they will become valiant
workers, and free and equal men. There will certainly be less luxury in
society, but unquestionably there will be more wealth; and still more,
there will be the kind of luxury which is now ignored by all,--the luxury
of humanity, the happiness of integral development and complete liberty
for everyone in the equality of all.17
413 O n the Morrow o f the Social Revolution
Terrorism Is Alien to a Genuine Social Revolution. A ll the other
classes [except the city and rural proletariat] must vanish from the face of
the earth; they must vanish not as individuals but as classes. Socialism is
not cruel; it is a thousand times more humane than Jacobinism, that is,
than the political revolution. It is not directed against individuals, not even
against the most nefarious among them, since it realizes only too well that
all individuals, good or bad, are the inevitable product o f the social status
created for them by society and history. True, Socialists will not be able
to prevent the people in the early days of the Revolution from giving vent
to their fury by doing away with a few hundreds of the most odious, the
most rabid and dangerous enemies. But once that hurricane passes, the
Socialists will oppose with all their might hypocritical-in a political and
juridical sensebutchery perpetrated in cold blood.18
The Revolution, for that matter, is neither vindictive nor sanguinary.
It demands neither the death, nor mass deportations, nor even individual
deportations of the Bonapartist gang which, armed with powerful means
and being much better organized than the Republic itself, conspires openly
against that Republic, conspires against France. The Revolution demands
only the imprisonment o f all the Bonapartists, simply as a measure of
public safety, until the end of the war and until those scoundrels and their
female counterparts disgorge at least nine tenths of the wealth which they
have amassed by robbing France. Following that, they shall be permitted
to go wherever they wish; the Revolution will even grant a certain sum to
every one of them to enable them to live out their days and hide their
shame. As one can see, this hardly can be called a cruel measure, but obvi
ously it will be very effective, just to the highest degree, and absolutely
necessary from the standpoint of the welfare of France.1*
As soon as the Revolution begins to take on a Socialist character, it will
cease to be cruel and sanguinary. The people are not at all cruel; it is the
ruling classes that have shown themselves to be cruel. A t times the people
rise up, raging against all the deceits, vexations, oppressions, and tortures,
of which they are victims, and then they break forth like an enraged bull,
seeing nothing ahead of them and demolishing everything in their way.
But those are very rare and very brief moments. Ordinarily the people are
good and humane. T h ey suffer too much themselves not to sympathize with
the sufferings of others.
But alas! too often have they served as instruments of the systematic
fury of the privileged classes. All the national, political, and religious ideas,
for the sake of which the people have shed their own blood and the blood
of their brothers, the blood of foreign peoples, all these ideas have always
served only the interests of those classes, ever turning into means of new
oppression and exploitation of the people. In all the furious scenes in the
history of all the countries wherein the masses of the people, enraged to
the point of madness, have turned their energies to mutual destruction, you
 4 14 TH E P O L IT IC A L PH IL O SO P H Y OF B A K U N IN

will invariably find that behind those masses are agitators and leaders be
longing to the privileged classes: A rm y officers, noblemen, priests, and
bourgeois. It is not among the people that one should look for cruelty and
concentrated and systematically organized cold fury, but in the instincts,
the passions, and the political and religious institutions of the privileged
classes: in the Church and in the State, in their laws, and in the ruthless and
iniquitous application o f those laws.20
I have already shown the fury of the bourgeoisie in 1848. The fu ry o f
1792, 1793, and 1794 likewise was an exclusively bourgeois fury. The
famous Avignon massacres (in October, 1791), which opened the era of
political assassinations in France were directed and partly perpetrated b y
priests and noblemen, and on the other hand, b y the bourgeoisie.
T h e Vendee butcheries carried out b y the peasants also were led by
reactionary noblemen leagued with the Church. W ithout exception the
instigators o f the September massacres were all bourgeois, and what is less
known: the initiators o f those massacres, and most of the principal killers
involved therein belonged to this class. Collot dHerbois, Pams, the wor
shiper of Robespierre; Chaumette, Bourdon, Fourquier-Tinville, that per
sonification of revolutionary hypocrisy and the guillotine; Carrier, who
was responsible for the drownings at Nantes-all these were bourgeois.
And the Committee of Public Safety, the calculated, cold, legal terror, the
guillotine itselfall these also were bourgeois institutions. The people were
in the role o f spectators, and at times, alas! they foolishly applauded those
exhibitions o f hypocritical legality and political fury of the bourgeoisie.
Following the execution of Danton, even the people became the victim of
that fury.21
The Jacobin, bourgeois, exclusively political revolution o f 1792-94 was
bound to lead to legal hypocrisy and the solution of all difficulties and all
questions b y the victorious argument of the guillotine.
When, in order to extirpate reaction, we content ourselves with at
tacking its manifestations without touching its roots and the causes which
continually produce it anew, we perforce arrive at the necessity of killing
many people, of exterminating, with or without legal sanctions, many re
actionaries.
It inevitably comes about that after killing many people, the revolu
tionaries see themselves driven to the melancholy conviction that nothing
has been gained and that not a single step has been made toward the real
ization of their cause, but that, on the contrary, they did an ill rum to the
Revolution by employing those methods, and that they prepared with their
own hands the triumph o f reaction. And that is so for two reasons: first,
that the causes of the reaction having been left intact, the reaction is given
a chance to reproduce and multiply itself in new forms; and second, that
ere long all those bloody butcheries and massacres must arouse against them
everything that is human in man.
415 O w the M orrow o f the Social Revolution
The revolution of 1793, whatever one may say about it, was neither
Socialist nor materialist, nor, using the pretentious expression of M. Gam-
betta, was it by any means a positivist revolution. It was essentially bour
geois, Jacobin, metaphysical, political, and idealist. Generous and sweeping
in its aspirations, it reached out for an impossible thing: establishment of
an ideal equality in the midst of material inequality. W hile preserving as
sacred foundations all the conditions of economic inequality, it believed
that it could unite and envelop all men in a sweeping sentiment of brotherly,
humane, intellectual, moral, political, and social equality. That was its dream,
its religion, manifested b y the enthusiasm, by the grandly heroic acts o f its
best and greatest representatives. But the realization o f that dream was
impossible because it ran contrary to all natural and social laws.22
Source Bibliography

Maximoff prepared the original text of this volume in Russian, and drew
the selections in it chiefly from the first Russian edition of Bakunins col
lected works, five volumes o f which appeared in 1919-1922, but also from
the German edition (1921-1924) and from a few pamphlets and periodicals.
For the convenience of readers, the French edition and one volume o f the
Spanish edition are included in the listing below, because they were con
sulted in the checking of the translation.

Ru s s i a n e d it i o n , Petrograd and Moscow: published by

Golos Truda.
Vol. I, 1919; 320 pp.
Vol. II, 1919; 295 pp.
Vol. Hi, 1920; 217 pp.
Vol. IV , 1920; 267 pp.
Vol. V , 1922; 214 pp.

germ an e d it io n , Berlin: Verlag Der Syndikalist.

Vol. I, 1921; 306 pp.
Vol. II, 1923; 281 pp.
Vol. Ill, 1924; 274 pp.

fren ch e d it io n , Paris: P. V . Stock.

Vol. I, 1895; 327 pp.
Vol. II, 1907; 456 pp.
Vol. Ill, 1908; 406 pp.
Vol. IV , 1910; 512 pp.
Vol. V, 1911; 362 pp.
Vol. V I, 1913; 434 PP*

Sp a n i s h e d it i o n , Buenos Aires: Editorial La Protesta.

Vol. V , Statism and Anarchism, 1929; 316 pp.

416
Source Notes

K E Y T O A B B R E V IA T IO N S in these notes:
Each source is indicated b y a set of initials, and the language in which
the source materia! was printed is shown b y a single initial, followed by
the volume number in a Roman numeral, and then b y the page number.
R means Russian; G German; F French; and S Spanish. Thus the designa
tion PH C; F III a 16-218 means Philosophical Considerations, French
volume III, pages 216-218. In some instances reference is made to sources
in more than one language.
a m A Member of the International Answers Mazzini; Russian volume V ;
French volume VI.
m The Beat of Berne and the Bear of St. Petersburg; Russian volume III;
French volume II.
c l A Circular Letter to My Friends in Italy; Russian volume V ; French
volume VI.
nsThe Double Strike in Geneva; German volume II; French volume V .
m Drei Vortraege von den Arbeitem das Thais von St. Inner im Schweizer
Jura, May, 1871; German volume II.
fsat Federalism,
Socialism, and Anti~Theologism; Russian volume III;
French volume I.
g as God and the State; N ew York: Mother Earth Publishing Association,
[circa 1915], 86 pp. See below, following the abbreviation k g e , a
reference to a continuation of the essay embodied in this pamphlet.
izIntegral Education; Russian volume IV ; French volume V .
irReport of the Commission on the Question o f Inheritance Right; French
volume V.
ivThe Intrigues of Mr. Utin; in Golos Truzenika, a Russian periodica! of
the Industrial Workers of the W orld, Chicago, 1925; volume VII, No.
3, pp. 19-23; and volume VII, No. 4, pp. 9-12.

4*7
* 4 18 Source Notes
kge The Knout o-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution; Russian
volume II; French volumes II, III, and IV . Part o f the text of this
also appears in French volume I, under the heading of G od and the
State. That section, as Rudolf Rocker points out on page 25, was
found among Bakunin's manuscripts by Max Nettlau, and is a logical
continuation of the essay in the pamphlet bearing the same title.
vpL etters to a Frenchman; Russian volume IV ; French volumes II, IV .
l g s A Letter to the Geneva Section of the Alliance; French volume VI.
vpL etters on Patriotism; Russian volume IV ; French volume I.
lu The Lullers; Russian volume IV ; French volume V .
o g s Organization and the General Strike; German volume II; French

volume V .
01Organization of the International; Russian volume IV .
op O ar Program; Russian volume III.
pa Protestation of the Alliance; Russian volume V ; French volume V I.
p a ir The Program of the Alliance of International Revolution; written in
French and published in Anarchichesky Vestnik, Anarchist Courier, a
Russian pubhcation, in Berlin; volume V -V I, November, 1923; pp. 37-
41; volume VII, May, 1924, pp. 38-41.
pc The Paris Commune and the State; Russian volume IV ; and in a pam
phlet, The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State, Paris: Aux Bureaux
des Temps Noveau, 1899; 23 pp.
ph c Philosophical Considerations; German volume I; French volume III.
p i The Politics of the International; Russian volume IV ; French volume V .
p s s i The Program of the Slavic Section of the International, 1872. (Rus

sian volume III.

pvrPechat y Revoliutzia (The Printed W ord and Revolution); a Russian
periodical, Moscow, 1921-June, 1930.
kkA Report on the Alliance; Russian volume V ; French volume VI.
$KtScience and the Urgent Revolutionary Task; pamphlet in Russian;
Geneva, Switzerland: Kolokol, 1870; 32 pp.
stkStatism and Anarchism; Russian volume I; Spanish volume V . The
Russian title o f this volume is Gosudarstvennost i Anarkhiia, which lit
erally means Statism and Anarchy. But from Bakunins context therein
it is evident that he was weighing one organized system against another,
and not comparing a system with a condition of lawless confusion and
disorder. So wherever this work is cited in these pages it is consistently
referred to as Statism and Anarchism.
wra W orId Revolutionary Alliance of Social Democracy; pamphlet in
Russian; Berlin: Hugo Steinitz Verlag, 1904; 86 pp.
419 Source N otes
PART I
Ch. i~Tbe World Outlook 3. PHC; G I 218. 3. Ibid., 93.
1. PHC; F III 4 16-218. 4. Ibid., 220. 4. K G E ; R II 144-145; F
2. Ibid,, 219. 5. Ibid., 263, III 19-20.
3. Ibid,, 219-220. 6. PA; F V I 98. 5. Ibid., R II 146.
4. /Wfif, 229. 7. PHC; G 1 264; F i l l 316. 6. Ibid,, R II 202-204.
j. F S A T ; R III 157; F I 79. 8. Ibid^ G I 264-265; F III 7. FSAT; F I 73.
6. FSA T; R III 157m F I 318-319. 8. Ibid., 81-83.
79-8on. 9. Ibid., G I 266. 9. Ibid., 108.
7. FSA T; F I 79-80. jo. Ibid., G I 265; F III 319. 10. Ibid., to8-i09n.
8. PHC; G I 224; F III 231. 11. K G E; R I I 192. 11. Ibid., 109.
9. PHC; G I 225; F III 234. 12. Ibid., 192-193. 12. PHC; G I 246.
10. PHC; G I 267. 13. FSAT; F 1 68-69. 13. FSAT; F I no-i 11.
h . Ibid., 267-268. 14. PHC; G I 263. 14. P H C ;G 1 246;F i l l 280-
12. PC; R IV 261-262; F 15. Ibid., G I 263-264; F III 281.
pamphlet t8. 315. 15. Ibid., G I 248; F HI 181.
13. PC; R IV 267. 16. Ibid., G I 266-267; F III
322-323. Ch. j~Man as Conqueror
14. K G E ; R II 170. of Nature
15. PHC; F III 220. 17. KG E; R I I 198.
18. FSA T; R III; 153; F I 1. PHC; G I 250.
16. Ibid., 220-222. 2. Ibid., 250.
17. Ibid., 223. 69-71.
19. Ibid., F I 71-72. 3. Ibid., 225.
18. Ibid., 220. 4. Ibid., G I 250-251; F III
19. FSA T; F 1 123-124. 20. Ibid., F I 72-73.
21. AM ; R V 69; F V I 125- 287-288.
20. Ibid., 124-12$. $. Ibid., G I 251-252.
126.
21. Ibid., 126-127. 6. Ibidn 252.
22. Ibid., 125-126. 22. FSA T; F I 73.
13. Ibid., 73-75. 7. Ibid., G I 253; F III 293.
23. Ibid., 127-128. 8. Ibid., G I 254; F III 295.
24. KG E; R I I 199-
Ch. 2 Ch. S-Mind and W ill
Idealism and Materialism C h .4-
Science and Authority 1. PHC; G I 226-227; F i l l
1. K G E; R II 149; F III 238-243.
1. K G E; R II 167-168.
26-27. 2. FSAT; F I 95-96.
2. Ibid., 193.
2. ST A ; R I 234. 3. Ibid., 104-107.
3. Ibid., 197.
3. K G E; R II 149-iso. 4. P H C ;G I 228-229.
4. Ibid., 194-195. 5. Ibid., 230-232.
4. Ibid., 150-151. 5. Ibid., 196.
5. Ibid., R II 151; F III 29. 6. Ibid., 197. Ch. y-Man Subject to
6. Ibid., R II 162-163. 7. Ibid., 203. Universal Inevitability
7. Ibid.,R II 163; F III 48. 8. Ibid.,R I I 166-167; F HI 1. PHC; G I 237-239; F III
8. Ibid., R II 183-184; F III 5 15 3 * 262-266.
76-77. 9. ST A ; R I 187-188. 2. Ibid., G I 242-245.
9. Ibid., R II 184-185. 10. KG E; R II 200-201; F 3. FSA T; F I 96-97.
10. Ibid., R I I 185. III 100-102. 4. IE; R IV 58-60; F V
11. Ibid.,R I I 185-186. 160-162.
12. CL; R V 167. Cb. $-Modern Science
5. Ibid., R I V 60-61.
13. Ibid., 137-140. Deals in Falsities 6. PHC; G 1 228;F i l l 245.
14. Ibid., 142-144. 1. LU ; R IV 32; F V 117- 7. Ibid., G 1 232; F III 257-
15. Ibid., 144. 119. 259.
16. AM ; F V I 114-115. 2. Ibid., R I V 39.
17. Ibid., 116-118. 3. IE; R IV 44; F V 137. Ch. 10-
18. Ibid., 118. 4. Ibid., R IV 45; F V 138. Religion in Man's Life
19. Ibid., 119. 5. LU; R IV 39-40; F V 1. FSAT; F I 83-86.
20. Ibid., 119-120. 132-133. 2. Ibid., 86-87,
3. Ibid,, 87-88.
C h .3- Ch. 6-Man: 4. Ibid., 96-97.
Science: General Outlook Animal and Human Nature 5. Ibid., R III 165-168; F I
1. PHC; G 1 226. 1. FSA T; F I 87. 97-104.
2. KG E; R I I 170. 2. Ibid., 83-86. 6. Ibid., F I 112-121.
 420 Source N otes
Ch. 11-Man Had to Look 10. K G E; R II 269-271. Ch. m -
for God Within Himself Individuals Are Strictly
1. FSA T; F I 128-134. Ch. 3-Ethics: Truly
Determined
2. Ibid., 61-64. Human or Anarchist
1. K G E ; R II; 261-262; F I
3. Ibid., 64-68. Morality
1. K G E ; R II 294-295; F I *7?-i75.
4. CL; F V I 398-399- 2. FSAT; F I 139-143.
325-326.
Ch. 12-Ethics: Divine or 3. IU; R 19.
2. FSAT; F I 136-137.
Bourgeois Morality 4. OI; R IV 71.
3. Ibid., 177-190.
1. F SA T ; F 1 133-136* 5. IE; F V 158-159.
4. Ibid., 195 et seq.
2. K G E ; R II 279. 6. PC; R IV 264-265.
3. Ibid., 279 et seq. Ch. i6~Etbics: Man the Ch. ip-
Product of Environment Philosophy of History
Ch. 13-Ethics:
1. FSA T; F I 198-204. 1. LP; F I 219.
Exploitation of the Masses
2. IE; F V 160-166. 2. p h C; g 1 225-226; f in
1. K G E; R II 286-294.
3. FSAT; F I 54-55. 236-237.
2. Ibid., R II 230-253; F III
4. AM ; F V I 122. 3. LP; F I 254-255.
76.
5. PAIR; R 40. 4. I b i d 221.
3. Ibid., R II 250-25311; F
6. Ibid., 39. 5. Ibid., 219-220.
I I I 172-17511*
7. Ibid., 40. 6. Ibid., 156-260.
4. Ibid., R II 294.
8. IE; F V 157. 7. W R A ; R pamphlet 32-
Ch. 14-Ethics: J3 -
Morality of the State Ch. 17-
8. K G E ; R II 147.
1. F SA T; F I 139-140. Society and the Individual 9. Ibid; 210.
2. Ibid., 145-152. 1. KG E; R II 269-270. 10. Ibid; 156.
3. BB; F II 61-62. 2. IU; R 18-21. 11. Ibid; R II 185-186; F III
4. Ibid., 62-65. 3. Ibid; R 17. 79-80.
5 . F SA T; F 1152-153- 4. K G E ; R II 262-263. 12. Ibid; R I I 195-196; F III
6* BB; F II 24, 5. Ibid., R II 256-261; F 9 3 *9 4 -
7. FSAT; F I 153**55- 267-273. 13. Ibid.,R II 156-157.
8. Ibid., 156. 6. Ibid., R II 263; F I 276- 14. LF; R IV 21-23.
9. Ibid., 158-161. 277. 15. K G E; R II 149.

P A R T II
Ch. i~ 4. PA; F V I 35. 3. W R A ; R 54-55.
Property Could Arise Only 5. F SA T; F I 26-27, 4. K G E ; R II 95-96.
in the State 6. Ibid., 30-35. 5. W R A ; R 61-67.
1. K G E; R II 230. Ch. 4- 6. K G E ; R I I 81.
2. Ibid., 250-253. Cbeckered History of the 7. S T A ; R I 86.
3. PHC; G I 204-205. Bourgeoisie 8. Ibid; 59-60.
4. IR; F V 199-202. 1. LP; FI 208-211. 9. L U ;F V 115-116.
2. Ibid., 215-216. Ch. 6-
Ch. 2-
3. ST A ; R I 209. Peasants7 Day Is Yet
Tbe Present Economic 4* Ibid; 94. To Come
Regime
5. IE; F V 139-140. 1. LF; R IV 211-213.
1. ST A ; R I 69. 2. ST A ; R I 254.
6. CL; F V I 344-345-
2. Ibid., 109. 7. ST A ; R I 125-126.
3. IE; F V 137-138. 3. K G E; R I I 54 -55 -
8. Ibid., 307-308. 4. LF; R IV 183.
4. K G E ; R II 95. 5. CL; F V I 399-400.
9. LF; R IV 87.
5. PHC; G I 205-209. 10. LU; F V 107-108.
6. Ibid., 211-214. Ch. 7-
11. Ibid., R IV 29; F V 113. The State: General
Ch. 3- 12. PI; R IV 187-190.
Outlook
Class Struggle in Society 13. PA; F V I 67-68. 1. LP; F I 222-224.
Inevitable Ch. 5- 2. PC; R IV 260; F pam-
1. F SA T; F I 22-24.
2. PI; F V 185-186.
Proletariat Long Enslaved
1. W R A ; R pamphlet 33. f
ihlet 16.
bid; R IV 258-159; F
3. ST A ; R I 78-79. 2. CL; F V I 390-391. 14 -
 4 21 Source N otes
4. LP; F 1 **4-237. Ch. to- 8. K G E ; R II 172; G A S
5. F SA T; R III 188-187. Patriotism's Part in 35 -
Man's Struggle 9. KG E; R 171-172.
Ch. 8~
10. IR; F V 205.
The Modern State 1, LP; F I *27-231. n . STA ; R I 285; S V 279.
Surveyed 2. Ibid., 231-246. 1*. LU ; F V 131.
1. ST A ; R I 88-70; S 77- Ch. u - 13. SRT; R96.
79- Class Interests in 14. PSSI;R IIl70.
2. Ibid., R 83-84. 15. IR; F V 199-209.
3. Ibidn R 98-99. Modem Patriotism 16. OP; R III 97.
4. Ibid., R 109. 1. LP; F I *27. 17. ST A ; R 1 115.
5. Ibid., R 124-125, 2. FSAT; R III 251.
3. ST A ; R I 72- Ch. 13-
8. BB; F II 33-38. Power and Authority
7. PA; F VI i j . 4. FSAT; R HI 20.
1. PA; F V I 16-18.
8. Ibid., 18. 5. LF; R IV *16. 2. CL; F V I 343-344.
9. Ibid., 53-34. 6. PA; F V I 38. 3. STA ; R I *36.
10. BB; F II 38-37. 7. ST A ; R I 70-7*. 4. lbidn 238.
11. K G E; R II 33-34. 8. Ibid., 80-81. 5. KG E; R II 165-168;
11. PI; R IV 193-194. 9. Ibid., 72-73. G A S 29-32.
13. KG E; R II 35-38; F II 10. Ibid,, 82. 6. K G E ; R II 293; F I 320-
312-314. 11. Ibid., 88-87. 3**.
14. PI; R IV 194-195. 12. Ibid., 90. 7. Ibid., R II 171-172.
15. K G E; R II 248; F III 13. KG E; R II 84-85. 8. Ibid., 177-178.
169-170. 9. Ibid^ R n 172; F III 60.
18. Ibid,, R II 248. Ch. 12-
Law, Natural and Invented Ch. 14-
Ch. p- t. KG E; R 1 1 *6 2 . State Centralization and
Representative System 2. Ibid., R II 272-274; F L Its Effects
Based on Fiction under God and the 1. BB; F II 33-34.
1. B B;F II 35-42. State, 290-294. 2. Ibid., 57.
2. Ibid., 46-47, 3. Ibid., R II 164. 3. ST A ; R I 270.
3. Ibid,, 43. 4. Ibid, 165. 4. Ibid., 312-313.
4. KG E; R II 43-48; F II 5. Ibid., R II 167; G A S 5. FSAT; F 1 11-13.
3 *5-3 *9 - (pamphlet In English) Ch. tj~
5. W R A ; R 10-12. 31-32. The Element of Discipline
8. FSA T; F I 8-11. 6. Ibid., R I I 168; G A S 3*. i. KG E; R II 23-25; F II
7. /id., K i l l 116-125. 7. W R A ; R 12. 296-299.

P A R T II!
Ch. 1- 16. Ibid., R I I 265; F I 279. 30. ST A ; R I 306.
Freedom and Equality 17. Ibid., R II 265-266. 31. PHC; G I 214-215.
t. IE; R I V 57; F V 158. 18. Ibid., 266-267.
2. PHC; G I 215-216. 19. Ibid., 267. Ch. 2-
3. Ibid., 216. 20. PC; R IV 280; F pam- Federalism: Real and Sham
4. Ibid., 216.
5. IE; R IV 57; F V 158- J
ihlet 16.
bid., R IV 260-261.
1. FSAT; R III 128; F I
16-170.
159. 22. F S A T ;R III 147; F 1 58- 2. CL; R V 191-192; F V I
6. Ibid., R 57. 385.
7 - PA; R V 48; F VI 87. 23. KG E; R H 187. 3. Ibid., R V 192.
8. Ibid., R V 49; F V I 88. 24. LU; R IV 27; F V 109-
4. Ibid., 192.
9. K G E ;R I I 186;F i l l 51.
10. Ibid., R II 165; F III 49. 25. P Q R IV 250; F pam- 5. Ibid., R V 193; F V I
ihlet 4. 387-389-
50.
11. PHC; G I 229;F in 246. f
bid., R IV 250-251. 6. FSAT; R m 127.
12. K G E; R II 165. 27. Ibid., 251. 7. Ibid., 128,
13. Ibid., 165-168. 28. IE; R IV 56-57; E V 8. Ibid., 129,
14. Ibid., 264. 16511. 9. Ibid., 119-130.
15. Ibid., 264-265. 29. Ibid., R IV 6m. 10. Ibid., 130.
 4*2 Source N otes
i i. FSAT; R III 1305 F 1 15- 3. Ibid., R 226; F 41-42. 11. /id ,R 31.
z i. 4. Ibid., R 228. 12. Ibid., R 32. /
11. BB-, F II 57. 5. Ibid., R 228-229. 13. /id, R 32-33.
13. F SA T; R III 131 et.seqq 6. /id, R 229. 14. Ibid., R 33; F 62.
F I 1I-2Z. 7. Ibid, R 229-230; F IV 15. Ibid., R 34; F 64.
14. /id, R III 13; F I 33- 46-47.
8. /id, R 235-236. Cb. 8-
35 *
9. Ibid., R 236; F I V 58. Economic Solidarity
Ch. 3- 10. Ibid., R 236-237, at Its Widest
State Socialism Theories 11. Ibid., R 237. 1. PA; R V 40; F V I 73.
Weighed 12. Ibid., R 237-238, 2. Ibid., R 40-41; F 73.
1. F S A T ;R in 137;F I 36- 13. Ibid., R 238. 3. Ibid., R 41,
37 - 14. Ibid, R 238-239; F IV 4. Ibid., R 41-41.
2. Ibid., R 137. 61-62, 5. Ibid., R 42.
3. bid., R 138. 15. PI; R IV 18; F V 191. 6. Ibid., R 43.
4. ibid., R 138-139. 16. Ibid., R 18-19. 7. Ibid., R 41; F 73-80.
5. Ibid., R 139; F 1 40. 17. /id, R 19; F 192. 8. PI; R IV 7; F V 172.
6. Ibid., R 14*; F 46-48. 9. /id, R 8; F 174-175.
7. ibid., R 134. Ch. tf- 10. CL; R V 162; F VI 336.
8. Ibid., R 144-145; F 52-53. Stateless Socialism: 11. P A ; R V 20;F V I 39-40.
9. W R A ; R 18. Anarchism 12. C L ;R V 171; F V I 351.
10. ibid., 18-19. 1. F S A T ;R I I I 136;F I 33- 13. PI; R I V 9; F V 176.
11. /id, 19-20. 14. Ibid., R 10; F 176-178.
3 J*
12. /id, 20-21. 2. /id, R 145-146. 15. /id, R 11.
13. K G E ; R I I 74; F II 369- 3. Ibid., 146-147.
370. Ch. 9~
3. Ibid., R 146-147. What the Workers Lack
14. ibid., R 74-75. 4. /id, R 147; F 59.
15. WRA*, R 43-45. 1. P I ;R I V n -!2 ;F V 180-
5. BB; R m 22, F I I 39.
16. Ibid., 44-45, 181.
6. ST A ; R I 114.
17. PI; R IV 17; F V 190. 2. Ibid., R 12.
7. Ibid., 96.
18. CL; R V 170; F V I 350. 3. /id,R 12-13.
8. C L ;R V 171; F V I 351. 4. /id, R 13; F 182.
Ch. 9. Ibid., R 167; F 345. 5. PA; R V 46; F V I 82-83.
Criticism of Marxism 10. /id, R 197.
6. Ibid., R 46; F 84.
1. ST A ; R I 120-121. 11. /id, R 197-198; F 395-
7. Ibid., R 46-47.
2. Ibid., 238-239. 396.
8. Ibid., R 47.
3. Ibid., 139. 12. PC; R IV 257. 9. Ibid., R 47-48.
4. /id, 239-240. 13. Ibid., 257-258. 10. Ibid., R 48.
5. Ibid., 240. 14. Ibid., 258-259. 11. Ibid., R 48-49.
6. Ibid., 290. 15. Ibid., 259. 12. Ibid., R 49.
7. /id, 290-292, 16. Ibid., 251. 13. Ibid., R 49-50.
8. Ibid., 291-292. 17. Ibid., R 251-252; F pam 14. Ibid., R 50.
9. Ibid., 293. phlet 6. ij. Ibid., R 50-51; F VI 90-
10. PA; R V 19-20; F V I 38- 18. /id, R 252.
9 1*
39* 19. ST A ; R I 320. 16. Ibid., R 53.
11. ST A ; R I 293-294; S V 20. CL; R V 172; F V I 352. 17. Ibid., R 53-54; F 96-97.
287. 18. R A ; R V i i 2 ; F V l 223-
Ch. 7 -
12. Ibid., R 294. 224.
13. Ibid., R 294-295. Fotmdmg of W orkerf
19. CL; R V 198; F V I 396.
14. Ibid., R 295. International 20. DS; G II 49; F V 45-46.
15. Ibid., R 295-296. 1. PA; R V 34-35; F V I 64. 21. /id, G 49-50.
16. Ibid., R 296-297. 2. Ibid., R 35. 22. Ibid, G 50; F V 47.
17. Ibid., R 298; S V 291. 3. Ibid., R 35-36. 23. PI; R I V 21; F V 198.
4. Ibid., R 36; F 66. 24. Ibid,, R 22; F 199.
Cb. 5- 5. Ibid., R 37-38.
Social-Democratic 6. Ibid., R 38. Ch. o-
Program Examined 7. Ibid., R 38-39. Fatberland and Nationality
1. LF; R IV 224-225; F I V 8. /id, R 39-40; F 68-72. 1. CL; R V 189-190; F V I
39-40. 9. /id, R 30; F 56. 381-583*
2. Ibid., R 226; F 39-40. 10. Ibid,, R 30-31. 2. /id, R 190.
 4* 3 Source N otes
3. Ibid., R 190. 2. IE; R IV 43; F V 135. 19. IU; R 13.
4. Ibid., R 191; F 384. 3. Ibid^ R 44; F 136. 20. K G E; R n 177; F III
5. ST A ; R 114-115. 4. Ibid., R 49. 6911.
6. Ibid., R 114-115. 5. Ibid., R 49.
7. K G E; R II 103. 21. Ibid., R 177-178.
6. Ibid., R 49-50. 22. IE; R IV 61-62; F V
8. FSAT; R III to2. 7. Ibid., R 50-51; F 147-148.
Ch. n - 165-166.
8. Ibid., R 51-52.
Women, Marriage, and 9. Ibid., R 52; F 150. 23. CL; R V 173-174; F VI
Family 10. F SA T; R m 113-214; 3 55 -
1. R A ; R V 97; F V I 198. F 1 199-200. 24. IU; R VIL No. 4, 10-11.
i. PSSI; R III 71. 11. IU; R VII, No. 4,10. 25. I E ; R I V 62.
3. OP; R HI 96-97. 11. FSA T; R III 214; F I 26. Ibid., R 61; F V 166-168.
4. PSSI; R III 70. 200-201.
5. CL; R V 191; F V I 385, 27. FSAT; R III 132.
13. IE; R I V 54.
6. OP; R HI 97. 28. Ibid., 132.
14. Ibid., 54.
7. PAIR; R V -V I 37-41; 15. Ibid., 54-55. 19. KG E; R II 176.
VII 38-41. 16. Ibid., R 55; F V i 55. 30. IE; R IV 63; F V 168.
Ch. 12- 17. Ibid., R 56; F 158.
Upbringing and Education 18. K G E; R II 176-177; F Ch. 1^Summation
1. CL; R V 173; F VI 354. III 68-6911. 1. PAIR; R.

P A R T IV
Ch. 1- 3. LP; R IV 82; F I 213. 32. Ibid., R 202; F 402-403.
The Rationale of 4. LF; R I V 225; F IV 39. 33. ST A ; R I 60.
Revolutionary Tactics 5. /W i, R 147; F II 183- Ch. $-
I. SRT; R 5 et seq. 184. Methods of the
Ch. 2 6. ST A ; R I 79. Preparatory Period
Economic Problem 7. PC; R IV 258. *i * rP V R p
1 X\y jev*
Underlies A ll Others 8. ST A ; R I ti8.
2. C L ;R V 2 11 -.F V I 418-
1. SRT; R 12-20. 9. Ibid., 118-119.
419.
2. Ibid., 29. 10. OI; R IV 67.
3. Ibid., R 211; F 418.
3. Ibid., 20. 11. PI; R IV 21; F V 197.
4. Ibid., R 212; F V I 420.
Ch. 3- 12. CL; R V 211-212; F VI
5. K G E ;R II io8 ;F I I4i 8-
Socio-Economic and 419-420.
419.
Psychological Factors 13. PC; R IV 257. 6. ST A ; R I 90.
1. OI; R IV 68. 14. PI; R I V 22; F V 198. 7. PA; R V 36; F V I 66-67.
2. Ibid., 68-69. 15. ST A ; R I 92. 8. Ibid., R 38; F 70.
3. K G E; R U 35; F II 313- 16. Ibid., 114. 9. CL; R V 172; FVI 352-
17. FSA T; R HI 144;F I 53.
18. LF; R IV 213; F I V 18. 353-
4. ibid., R 35-36; F 314. 10. Ibid,, R 171; F 351.
5. L F ;F Il2 2 i. 19. PI; R IV 15; F V 184- 11. F SA T; R III 136; F I 34-
6. K G E; R II 7 5 ^ 3 7 1 . 185.
35-
7. Ibid., R 73-74; F 369. 20. ST A ; R I 6o-6i. 12. RA; R V 102; F V I 207.
8. LP; R IV 99; F I 242- 21. Ibid., 97. 13. IE; R I V 62-63; F V 168.
243. 22. Ibid., 88. 14. RA; R V 101-102; F VI
9. ST A ; R 1 95. 23. PA; R V 45; F V I 82. 206-207.
10. LF; R IV 213. 24. ST A ; R I 257. 15. IE; R I V 63; F V 168.
II. Ibid., 213-214. 25. Ibid,, R 285; S V 279. 16. O G S ;G Il5o-5i;aIsoin
12. Ibid., R 214; F IV 19-20. 26. Ibid., R 266; S 260. French volume V .
13. Ibid., R 219. 27. CL; R V 175; F V I 359- 17. W R A ; R 77-79.
14. Ibid., R 219-220. 360. 18. Ibid., 79-80.
15. Ibid., R 220; F I V 30-31. 28. Ibid., R 177; F 362. 19. Ibid., 86.
Ch. 4- 29. LF; R IV 197. 20. PA; R V 24; F V I 45-46.
Revolution and 30. CL; R V 349; F V I 348- 21. W R A ; R 21.
Revolutionary Violence 349. 22. Ibid., 21-22.
1. BB; R III 12; F II 20-21. 31. Ibid., R 196-197; F VI 13. Ibid., 22.
2. K G E; R II 69; F II 363. 3 94 - 24. Ibid, 22-23.
 424 Source N otes
25. Ibid; 23. 15. Ibid., 175. t0* Ibid., R 189; F 246.
26. Ibid., 24. 16. Ibid,, 175-176. n . K G E ; ^ II 1 1 1-112; F II
27. ST A ; R I 289*290. 17. Ibid., 176.
4 *3 *4 *4 *
28. Ibid., 290. 18. Ibid., 176-177. !* LF; R IV 190.
29. W R A ; R 24. Cb. 7- 13* Ibid,, R 190-192; F II
30. Ibid., 2J. Revolution by Decrees 247-248.
31. Ibid., 29-31. Doomed to Failure
32. LF; R I V 238; F I V 61. 1. LF; R IV 177; F II 227- Cb. 9-
33. CL; R V 204; F V I 406. 228. On the Morrow of the
34. K G E; R II 20-21; F II 2. Ibid., R 177-178, Revolution
292-293. 3. Ibid., 178. 1. LP; R IV 86; F I 219-
35. Ibid., R 21; F 293. 4. Ibid., 179. 220.
36. PA; R V 16; F VI 33. 5. Ibid., 179-180, 2. CL; R V 195; F V I 392.
37. K G E; R II 22; F II 294- 6. Ibid., 180. 3. F S A T ; R III i 4;F I 55-
295. 7. Ibid., 182. 56.
38. Ibid., R 22-23; F 29J. 8. Ibid., 182-183. 4. C L ;R V 2 0 i;F V I 401-
Cb. 6~ 9. Ibid., 185. 402.
Jacobins of iSyo feared 10. Ibid., 185-186. 5. Ibid., R 197-198; F 396.
Revolutionary Anarchy n . Ibid., 186. 6. OP; R III 97.
1. L F ; R I V 146; F II 182- 12. Ibid., 186-187; F II 242. 7. LF; R IV 189-190.
183. 13. KG E; R II 48; F II 332- 8. Ibid., R 190; F II 246-
2. Ibid., R 148; F 186. 333- *4 7 *
3. Ibid., R 149; F 186-187, 14. Ibid., R 48-49; F 333. 9. ST A ; R I 236.
4. Ibid; R 1$0-151; F 188- i j . Ibid., R 49; F 334,
10. LU ; R IV 37; F V 127-
189. Cb. S
5. Ibid.,R i j i ; F 190. Revolutionary Program 11. ST A ; R I 236.
6. Ibid., R 169; F 215. for Peasants 12. IE; R I V 49.
7. Ibid., R 169-170; F II 1. KGE; R II49; FII 334. 13. Ibid., R 49; F V 146.
216-217. 2. Ibid., R 49-50; F 33c. 14. Ibid., R 50; F 146.
8. Ibid., R <70-171; F 216- 3. Ibid., R 50; F 335-336. 15. C L ;R V 200.
218. 4- LF; R IV 187; F II 242- 16. Ibid., 200-201.
9. K G E; R II 61-62; F II 17. Ibid., R 201; F V I 401.
351-352. 5. K G E ; R II 58; F 11347. 18. Ibid., R 200; F 400.
10. LF; R IV <71; F II 219. 6. Ibid., R 58; F II 347-348. 19. PHC; G 1 201-202; F III
11. Ibid., R <73. 7. LF; R I V 187; F I I 243. 183-184.
12. Ibid., 173-174- 8. KG E; R II 58; F II 348. 20. Ibid., G 202-204.
13. Ibid., 174. 9. LF; R IV 187-188; F II 21. Ibid., G 202-204.
14. Ibid., 174-175- 243-244. 22. Ibid., G 204; F 189-191.
Index

Adam, and tree of knowledge, 163 tions in his writings, 13; fragmentary
Adler, Georg, 9 character of almost his entire literary
Agriculture supersedes cattle breeding, output, 13; the most important Anar
171 chist political philosopher, 13; role
Aksakov, Konstantin, 33 of, in Anarchist tradition, 13; intel
Alexander II, 19 lectual ancestor of Syndicalism, 14;
Anarchism, Godwins, io; did not orig Anarchism did not originate with
inate with Bakunin, 14; philosophic, him, 14; reasons for lack of his works
9, to, 14, 16; Anarchist ideas in Eng in English, 14-13; biased historical
land and France, 10; as a theory of account of his conflict with Marx,
political speculation is gone, 13; re 14; he and Marx battle for control
born as theory of political action, 131 of First International, leading to its
an ancient doctrine, i<5; ideal of, 155; destruction, 15; Carr, Edward H., his
is stateless Socialism, 294 et seq.; An biography of Bakunin rated as con
archists and Communists methods, taining best and most detached ac
300*, Anarchist revolution, 404; 11, 12, count of Bakunin-Marx relations, 15;
31* *97 Bakunin counted among intellectual
Anarchist revolution, 404 forebears of Lenins party, 13; influ
Anarchist-Socialists, 281 ence of, on Russian Socialism, 13;
Anarchist syndicalism, unthinkable with Statism and Anarchism, 13; publica
out Bakunin, 13 tion of his writings now timely, 16;
Anarchy, economic, 383; new social biographical details on, by Rudolf
order may be expected to come from Rocker, 17 et seq; unique among 19th
excess of present, 383; revolutionary, century revolutionary personalities,
389, 391, 40J, 407; 383, 404 17; exiled to Siberia (1857), 19; es
Animal habits, genesis of, 99 capes from Siberia, goes to London
Annenkov, P.M., 18 (1861), 19; in Russian prisons, 19;
Appeal to My Russian, Polish, and A ll held in Austrian fortress, 19; goes to
Slavic Friends, 21 Italy, 19; publication of his various
Appeal to the Slavs, 21 works, 20 et seq.; Youth of Mikhail
Aristotle, 276 Bakunin, T h e, autobiographical
August 4, night of, 217, 383 sketch, 30; enters artillery school in
Authority, and power, 248 et seq.; exer St. Petersburg, 31; promoted to offi
cise of, cannot be claimed on ground cer class, 30; finds new cause to fight
of science, 249; of science not identi for struggle of human freedom
cal with authority of savants, 254 against authority, 31; obtains discharge
Avignon massacres, 414 from Army, 32; absorbed in Fichtes
philosophical ideas, 33; transfers theo
Babeuf, link between French Revolution retical allegiance to Hegel, 33; book
and Socialism, 277 by Dr. Lorenz Stein introduces him
Bakunin, Mikhail, regarded self as a to Socialism, 33; becomes acquainted
Socialist, it-12; significance for mod with Communist ideology through
em students, t2; his frequently un contact with Wilhelm Weiding, 35;
concealed confusion, 12-13; scope of occasionally calls himself a Com
his activities, 13; internal contradic- munist, 35; goes to western Switzer-
425
42 6 Index
land, 3j; goes to Zurich and Dresden, joins First International, 45; attempts
36; crosses Alps on foot, 36; ordered to initiate in France a social-revolu
to return to Russia, but goes to tionary action which would refuse to
Brussels, 36; lives in Paris, becomes recognize the State, 46; Statism and
acquainted with Marx and Engels, Anarchism published, 46; in Bologna
36; derives part of his Socialism from on night of Pratt di Caprara, flees to
Proudhon, 37; Intimate Letters to Switzerland after defeat of that move
Herwegb, 37; decree by Tsar Nikolai ment, 47; hated by Marx and his fol
deprives him of all his civil and lowers, 47; intrigues by Marx, Utin,
nobility rights, confiscates his prop Lafargue, and others result in Bakun
erty in Russia, and sentences him to ins expulsion from International, 47;
life exile in Siberia if ever caught on Bakunin again beset by poverty and
Russian soil, 38; his Confession (to worries, 48; spends last years in Lu-
Nikolai I in 1851), 38; greatly dis
liked Marx, 38; Russian government
f ino, 48; his health breaks, he goes to
erne, hopelessly ill, dies there at age
inspires slanders against him, 38-39; of sixty-two, 48; letter to Albert
in Uresden when May revolution of Richard, 379; summation by, 338 et
1849 breaks out, 40; arrested in Chem seq.; written in 1871, says Nettiau,
nitz, 40; elements which impelled 347
writing of Confession, 40; his activity Becker, August, 35, 36
in 1848 loses effectiveness because of Beer sisters, 32
its close relation to nationalism, 40; Belgium, 301
spends year in Saxon prisons, 41; Belinsky, 32, 33
condemned to death, then gets com Bibliography, source, 416
mutation to life imprisonment, chained Bismarck, 235, 372, 376
in cell for a year, 41; condemned to Blanc, Louis 39, 277, 279
death again, another commutation, ex Botie, de la, Etienne, 10, t6
tradited to Russia, treated relatively Bologna, collapse of revolt in, 17
well in Peter-and-Paul fortress, 41; Bourdon, 414
Tsar sends Count Orlov to ask for Bourgeoisie, collective depravity of, 134;
confession from him, 41 ; Nikolais suc checkered history of, 193; Free mason
cessor, Alexander II, fails to see any ry the international of, in its heroic
repentance in that document, 41; soli past, 193; displaced by class antagon
tary confinement a spiritual torment, ism from its revolutionary position as
41; writes Alexander II moving de leader of the people, 194; upper bour
scription of effects of solitude, 41; geoisie, 195; petty, 195; the State a
near to suicide, 41; his family succeeds bourgeois-controlled institution, 196;
in having him sent to Siberia, 41; mar moral and mental decay of bour
ries Antonia Kwiatkowski, 42; travels geoisie, 196; a historically condemned
for business concern in Far East, 42; class in death agony, 197; Is bour-
resumes correspondence with Herzen, goisie altogether bankrupt?, 197, bour
42; escapes from Siberia, 42; boards geois reaction against military dictator
American ship, 41; visits San Francisco ship, 197; bourgeois Socialism, 198;
and N ew York, 42; arrives in London, bourgeoisie has no faith in future,
welcomed by Herzen and Ogarev, 42; 198; moderate and radical wings of,
old dissensions with Poles continue, 222; absorbing the vanquished, m the
43; Buktnin conspires in all directions, new Socialist order, 412; fury of, in
43; but his activities then produce 1848, 414
only meager results, 43; withdraws Bourgeois republic, cannot be identified
from Slavic national movements, 43; with liberty, 220
leaves London, goes to Belgium, Bourgeois revolutionism, epigone of, 194
France, Switzerland, Italy, 44; travels Buonarotri, 277
again, meets Proudhon, Elie and Burke, 10
Elise Reclus, Vogt, Garibaldi, 44;
visited by Marx, in London, 44; sees Cabet, 277, 279
defeat of Polish revolution (1863), 44; Caesarism, bourgeoisie tired of the reign
tries to use Free Mason movement, of, and militarism, which it founded in
but fails, 44; he and his friends quit 1848 because of fear of proletariat,
League for Peace and Freedom, 45; 973 5*
427 Index
Cafiero, Carlo, 24-25, 48 Communes, medieval and modem, 272
Cannibalism termed first human practice, Communism, article on, by Bakunin
126 (1843), 21
Capitalism, general tendencies of, 182 Ccmmxumst Manifesto, 64, 286
Carr, Edward H , his biography of Ba Communists, scientific, 387
kunin rated as containing best and Comte, Auguste, 73, 74, 99
most detached account of Bakunin- Confession by Bakunin (to Tsar Nikolai
Marx relations, 15*, deals almost ex I) 38, 39, 40, 41
clusively with factual incidents of Ba Considrant, Victor, 277
kunin's life rather than with his ideas, Consorteria, defined as an institution of
15; does not mention Statism and the merging aristocratic and pluto
Anarchism, regarded by some as Ba cratic classes, 273
kunin's greatest and most mature Contract, tacit, an absurd and wicked fic
work, 15-16 tion, 165; consequences of social con
Carrier, responsible for Nantes drown- tract disastrous, leading to absolute
ings, 414 domination by State, 165
Catholic civilization, 402 Co-operatives, protection of labor and
Catholic States, each had one or several State credit to, 292; 385
patron saints, 346 Copernicus, 105
Came breeding superseded by agricul Credo quia absurdum, 62
ture, 171 Czartoryski, Prince Adam, 38
Causality, universal, and creative dynam
ics, 53 Danton, 414
Chaumette, 414 Darkness, absolute, does not exist, 15 t
Children, upbringing of, 327; society and, Darwin, Charles, 169
3*7
Dates, Russian, are Old Style in Nettlau
Christianity, is absolute and final religion, sketch of Bakunin, 29
117 Democracy, and monarchy, little differ
Christian Saints, asocial character of, ence between, 221; as rule of people
16o-, their lives acme of idealistic in an equivocal concept, 223
dividualism, 160 Despair, as revolutionary factor, 370; and
Church and State are Bakunin's two bug discontent not sufficient, 371 ; sheer de
bears, 254 spair, without organizing power of
City workers, grievances o f peasants will, spells disaster, 371
against, 400; friendly attitude by, nec Determinism, Socialism, based on, 155
essary to overcome hatred of peasants, Dictatorship, cannot beget freedom, 287
400; dictatorship of, over peasants a Diderot, io, 16
baneful fallacy, 401; delegations of, Discipline, element of, 259-250
should not act as agents o f bourgeois Divine Providence, 102
republicans in villages, 403 Divine Right, 102
Civilization, invention of tools marks first Dresden, uprising in, 18
phase of, 170; cattle breeding next Drownings, at Nantes, 414
phase of, 171; slavery makes appear Drudge-people, always powerless because
ance with agricultural phase of, 172 poverty-stricken, 358; perpetual vic
Civil war, in villages not to be feared, tims or civilization, 359; have nothing
406; will result to higher social order, to renounce and nothing to break away
406; implicitly progressive role of, from, 359; are Socialists by virtue of
407; does not detract from, but adds their position, 359
Dualism, and monism, 83
to external power of a nation, 408 Duchatel, Count, 39
Classes, abolition of, will come from
revolutionary unity of workers and Economic problem, underlies all others,
peasants, 205; disappearance of, 410 358 et seq.
Gass struggle, inevitable in society, 188; Economic solidarity, at its widest, 308 et
and irreconcilable, 189; in terms of pro seq.
gress and reaction, 190 Education, and upbringing, 327 et seq.;
Committee of Public Safety, bourgeois, etpial education an indispensable con
4*4 dition of workers' emancipation, 327;
Commune of Paris, (1793), 27m and labor, 328; great majority of dif
Commune, Paris (1871), 68, 235, 27m ferences in ability due to differences in.
428 Index
3J3; equal and humanitarian education kunin for its control leads to its de
will eliminate many of present differ struction, ijj Bakunin expelled from, at
ences, 331; rational, 333; extra-mural, Hague Congress of, 47; Geneva Con
334; Socialist education impossible in gress of, 47, 310; London Conference,
existing society, 335; social environ 47; St. Imier Congress of, 47; founding
ment shapes mentality of teachers, 335; of, 301 et seq.; awakening of labor on
education for people must go hand-in- eve of, 301; necessary historic premises
hand with improvement in economic of, 307; trade union section, no ideol
conditions, 33d ogical conditions for joining, 309; why
Efremov, 32 political and anti-religious principles
Egoism, is basis of idealistic systems, 124 were eliminated from, 311; politics of,
Egoism, and sociability paramount in man, 313; organization of, 317; versus the
147 State, 318; cannot become a State, 319;
Eisenach, 289 adequate class-conscious membership
Eisenach Congress, 290 will make it invincible, 320; free critic
Encyclopedia o f Sciences, by Hegel, 74 ism essential to life of, 321; and the
Encyclopedists, 30 Revolution, 321; 12, 14, 45
Enfantin, Father, 277 Flocon, 39
Engels, Friedrich, becomes acquainted Foigny, Gabriel, 10
with Bakunin in Paris, 36; 18,47, 286 Folk instincts, and social science, 367
England, Anarchist ideas in, 10; to be a Folien, August, 36
gentleman in, one must go to church, Fourier, 277
and must own property, 133; 301 Fourquier-Tinville, 414
Environment, man wholly the product of, France, Anarchist ideas in, 10
*5* France, Napoleonic, in 1870, 389; four
Estates of the realm, how created, 354; epochs of its history, 408; o f 1792 com
internecine struggles of, 357; injury to, pared with that in Eighteen Seventies,
causes estate rebellions, 362 408; of Louis X IV s time, 4081 301,402
Ethics, divine or religious morality, 120 Franco-Prussian W ar (1870-71), 17, 46,
et seq.; exploitation of masses, 128 et 370
seq.; morality of the State, 136 et seq.; Fraternit Internationale, secret society
truly human or Anarchist morality, formed by Bakunin, 44, 45
146 et seq.; man wholly the product Freedom, not negation of solidarity, 156;
of environment, 152 generated at later stage of individual
Eugenie, Madame, wife of Napoleon III, revolt, 159; and militarism, 211; and
62 equality, 263 et seq.; Christian, 267;
Eve, and tree of knowledge, 163 and Socialism mutually complemen
Exploitation, logical consequence of idea tary, 269
of morally independent individuals, Free Mason movement, decay of, 194; 44
128; and government, 130; essence of Free trade, not a solution of workers eco
capitalism, 183; intensified, and its con nomic problem, 190; capitalism with, is
sequence, 184 fertile soil of growth o f pauperism, 190
Exploiters, in Russia, statistics on, 353 Free will, is only relative, 95; denied, 148;
IOI, 102
Fanelii, 46 French civilization, 402
Fatherland, and nationality, 324 et seq.; French Revolution, change in situation
State not the Fatherland, but the ab wrought by, 192; Socialism is logical
straction, the metaphysical, mystical, result of dynamics of, 192; stirrings of
political, juridical fiction of, 324 equality produced by, 276; Socialism
Favre, Jules, 236 the explicit expression of hopes raised
Fear, compels struggle, 87 by, 276; Babeuf the link between that
Federalism, real and sham, 271 et seq. revolution and Socialism, 277-, great
Feuerbach, Ludwig, 86 principle of, proclaimed anew, 409; 9,
Fictitious free labor contract, mechanics 10, 17, 18, 175
of, 186 French Revolution (1792-93), 390,392,415
Fire, man slow to utilize, 90
First cause, 55 Galileo, 84, 105
First International, hardly a single truly Gambetta, 235, 414, 415
objective study of struggle for control Garibaldi, 19, 42, 378
of, 14; battle between Marx and Ba- General strike, 383
 429 Index
German Protestant civilization, 402 of great creative tides of, 175
German Workers, General Association of, Hunger, and sex, basic drives of animal
28$ world, 226
Germany, has 5,000 workers' organiza
tions, 386; 196, 204, 288, 289, 291, 301, Idealism, defended by reigning houses and
376, 402 their courtiers, 62; dialectics of, 173
G od and the State, pamphlet {1881), 251 Idealists or materialises, which are right?,
continuation of, in first volume of 65; idealists point of view, 159
French edition of Bakunin, 25 Imola, collapse of revolt in, 17
God, if God exists, man is a slave, 62*, 1 Individual, solitary, a fiction, 122; strictly
reverse Voltaire's aphorism and say: If limited, 164
God really existed, it would be neces Inheritance law, abolition of, 296
sary to abolish him, 62; antiquity and Inheritance right, abolition of, 182, 242;
universality of belief in, have become, and work stimulus, 243; origin of, 245;
contrary to all science and logic, irre means of abolishing, 246
futable proofs of Gods existence, 105; Intelligentsia, moral bankruptcy of old,
is highest abstraction, 113; man had to 252
look for God within himself, 114; International, First, see First International
attributes of, 114; a robber, 115; con International, Italian, 45
notes negation of liberty, 118; is the International, Spanish, founded, inspired
last refuge apd supreme expression by Anarchist ideas from beginning, 45
of all absurdities and contradictions of International Workingmens Association,
idealism, 123; either God is no God at see First International
all, or his presence absorbs and destroys Italy, peasantry constitute vast and power
everything, 124; relation of, to man is ful army of Social Revolution, 20;;
master-slave relation, 130; cannot love and see entries under Mazzini
his subjects, 130; is an absurdity, tdi;
idea of, and that of soul's immortality jacobins, of 1870, feared revolutionary
mutually contradictory, 161 anarchy, 389 et seq,; of 1793, 389, 390
Gods, as founders of states, iz i Jesuits, and Jesuitesses, 62; long ruled
Godwin, William, ro, 11, 12 wretched Paraguayan Republic, 79
Government, by savants ends in despotism, Jesus Christ, correct in attitude toward
79; chief aim of each is to preserve lust for material riches, 162
and strengthen the State, civilization, Jesus, Society of, see Jesuits
and civil order, which is systematic jungle law, governs interrelations of
and legalized dominance over the ex States, 138
ploited people, 365 justice, human verms legal, 155
Guerra Omnium Contra Omnia, 129
Guillaume, James, 20, 84a Kaiser, 196
Guillotine, a bourgeois institution, 414 Kant, 32
Kapitalj Das, by Karl Marx, 187
Habits, a necessary part of social life, 230 Kisselev, Count, 38
Hegel, Georg W . F Encyclopedia of Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social
Sciences, by, 74; 60, 61 Revolution, 22, 23
Herbois, d, Coilot, 414 Kolb, 23
Heredity, moral characteristics not trans Kornilov, A . A., 30
mitted by, 151; physiological heredity Kropotkin, Peter, 20
not altogether denied, 154; biological, kulaks, 352
not denied, 243
Herwegh, Georg, 18, 35, 36, 37 Labor, a necessity, 87
Herzen, Alexander, lends Bakunin money Labor government loses democratic per
for his journey in 1840 from Russia to spective with possession of power, 218
Berlin, 34; 19, 23, 42, 43 Lafargue, Paul, intrigues of, against Ba
Hirsh, Max, 386 kunin, 47
History, not yet a real science, 75; phil Landauer, Gustav, 22
osophy o i 169; goals of, >?a; three Lassalle, Ferdinand; his program, 285; 286,
constituent elements of, 172; is revolu 288, 289, 386
tionary negation of past, 173; gradual Law, natural and invented, 237 et seq.;
unfoldment of humanity, 175; ebbing social, should not be confounded with
430 Index
juridical and political, 166; natural laws Merchant Guilds, 352
not political, 168; of the State, how Metaphysical morality, asocial character
created, 354 of, 127
League for Peace and Freedom, Geneva Metaphysics and first cause, 56; 60
(1867), 145,274,297 Mictnewicz, 38
Lelewel, Joachim, 36 Mieroslawski, 43
Lenin, Nikolai Vladimir Ulyanoff, 15 Militarism, and freedom, 211
Letters to a Frenchman About the Present Mill, John Smart, 23
Crisis, 22, 23 Monism, and dualism, 83
Libertarian revolutionists, how they differ Moral characteristics transmitted not by
from authoritarian, 300 heredity but by social tradition and
Liberty, James Tochettis magazine in education, 151
London, 25 Moral environment, will be created by
Louis X IV of France, 408 social revolution, 155
Lycuigus, 144 Morality, rooted in animal nature of man,
Lyons revolt (1870), 20 121; basis of, to be found only in
society, 121
Machiavelli, state morality according to, Moral law, in action, 156; emanates from
142; both right and wrong, 142; 366 human nature, 156
Moral responsibility, with man and ani
Man, limits of his understanding of uni
mals, 103
verse, 58; task of, inexhaustible, 59;
Moses, 144
origin of, 84; material source of moral
Municipal elections, closest to interests of
ana intellectual acts of, 85; cardinal
the people, 220
points of his existence, 85; wrong con Muraviev, ML N , 31
clusions from fact of animal descent of, Muraviev, Nikolai Nazarovitch, 31
86; superiority of, 871 character of his Muraviev, Sergei Nikolayevitch, 31
work, 88; as conqueror of Nature, 88; Muraviev-Amurslri, Nikolai, Governor-
life of, is continuation of animal life, General of Eastern Siberia, 42
92; only he has power of speech, 93; is Muriavevs, 63
he responsible for his unbringmg?, 97;
subject to universal inevitability, 98;
not bom free and socially independ Nantes, drownings at, 414
ent individual, 159; a social animat, 165 Napoleon Bonaparte, coup d'etat of, 194;
Marchal, Sylvain, 10 State despotism personified by, 257;
Marriage, woman, and family, 326-327; 258, 272
free marriage union, 326 Napoleon 111, behind national movements,
44; classed as a worker, a highway
Marx, Karl, becomes acquainted with Ba robber, 180; built power on universal
kunin in Paris, 36; visits Bakunin in suffrage, which never betrayed his
London, 44; Das Capital called magni trust, 217; mystic cult of authority in
ficent work, 187; 12, 14, 15, 18, 36, 38, the France of, 259; 19, 62, 135, 180,
45, 47, 64, i n , 286, 288, 289
Marxism, fallacies of, 64; and idealism, 64; * 35 . *S*. *5<S
Nationality, and fatherland, 324 et seq.;
criticism of, 283 et seq. and universal solidarity, 325
Massacre, in Avignon, 414; Vendee butch Nature, creates the worlds, 54; harmony
eries, carried out by peasants, led by in, 55; does not know any laws, 57;
reactionary noblemen leagued with necessity of struggle against, 90; uni
Church, 414; instigators of September, versal Nature not hostile to man, 91;
all bourgeois, 414; drownjngs at Nantes, no revolt possible against, 91; and hu
4 *4 man freedom, 94; man cannot revolt
Materialism, dogmas of, 65-66; dialectics against nor escape from, 263
of, 173 Nechayef, Sergei, 46
Materialists or idealists, which are right?, Nettlau, Max, biographical sketch of Ba
65 kunin, 29 et seq.; 9, 18, 20, 21, 25, 3470
Maximoff, Gregori Petrovich, j 6,25-27,53 Nikolai I, Tsar, 38
Maynard, John, 13n nolens volens, 136, 165
Mazzini, Giuseppe, pseudo-Socialism of,
44; 23, 46, 65, 66, 67, 68, 144, 271, 272, Ogarev, Nikolai, letter to, 23; 17, 19, 42,
3 *4 . 377 . 378 . 3 *. 381 43
 43* Index
Paine, 11 well defined characteristics, 199; and
Panis, 414 economic crises, 199; their interna
Paraguayan Republic, wretched, long tionalism, 199; possible allies of, 203;
ruled by Jesuits, 79 snobbishness of, harmful to cause of
Paris Commune (1793), 17m peasant-worker unity, 205; internation
Paris Commune (1871), 17, 19, 46, 47, 68, alism issues from living experiences of,
235, 27*n 307
Patriotism, runs counter to ordinary hu Property, theology and metaphysics of
man morality, 139; its part in man's religion of, 134; could arise only in the
struggle, 225 et seq.; never was popular State, 179; theology and metaphysics
virtue, 225; class interests in modem, of, 179; yielded only by non-produc
232 et seq.; bourgeois, 233; patriotism tive labor, 179; and capital are iniqui
of peasants undermined by bourgeois tous in historic origin and parasitic, 180
psychology, 233; when patriotism turns Protestantism, reinforces authority of sov
into treason, 234; only city proletariat ereign, proclaiming it proceeds direct
is genuinely patriotic, 235; and uni ly from God, 251
versal justice, 323 Proudhon, Pierre Joseph, on universal
Peasants, proletarianization of, 182; rev suffrage, 214; his bank, 279; 10, 11, 12,
olutionary approach to, 391; class 37, 278
struggles in villages will rid them of Proudhonian mutualises, 167
their prejudices, 392; antagonism be Phychologicai factors, and socio-eco
tween them and city workers due to nomic, 367 et seq.
misunderstanding, 393; ignorance of, Psychology, 74
394; religious bigotry among, can be Public Safety, Committee of, bourgeois,
overcome by correct revolutionary
414
tactics, 393; attachment of, to property
no nous obstacle to revolution, 398; raison d'etat, see reason of State
terror against, would be fatal to rev Reaction in Germany, The, a Fragment
olution, 399; grievances of, against
by a Frenchman, 21
city workers, 400; friendly attitude by reason of State, 141, 142, 334
city workers necessary to overcome
Reclus, Ele, 44
hatred of, 400; workers dictatorship Reclus, Elise, 25, 44
over, a baneful fallacy, 401; revolu
Referendum devised and put into practice
tionary program for, 404 et seq.; revo
in Zurich, 219
lutionary self-interest will impel them Reichel, Adolf, Bakunin writes him from
to fight invaders, 403 fortress of Koenigstein, 41; 36, 48
People's Cause {They. Romanov, Puga
Reichel, Matilde, 41
chev, Pestel?, 21
People's State, 286 Religion, in man's life, 103; spring source
Pescantini, Madame, 36 of, 106*, instinctive fear is beginning of,
Petrashevsky, conflict with Bakunin, 42 107; fetichism, the first religion, a re
Philosophers, great, 61 ligion of fear, 108; difference between
religious feeling of man and animal,
Pol, aided by Bakunin and Russian mil
109; distorts natural trends, 116; first
itary organization headed by Poeebnya,
step toward humanity, 117; always
sympathetic officer from Warsaw, 43
allied with tyranny, n8; must be com
Polish Democratic Centra! Committee, 38 bated, 118; founded on blood, on sac
Polish insurrection (i 863-64), 19, 44 rifice, 119; triumph of humanity in
Political Theology (The) of Mazztni and compatible with survival of religion,
the International, 22 119; inaugurates a new bondage in
Potebnya, sympathetic Warsaw officer place of slavery, 120; only social rev
heads Russian military organization olution can destroy, 120; can not be
which aids Poles, 43 effectively fought by revolutionary
Poverty, not all-sufficient factor of revol decrees, 393
ution, 370 Representative system based on fiction, 217
Prati di Caprara, 47 Republic, favorite form of bourgeois rule,
Preparatory period, methods of, 379 et 222; in itself holds no solution for
seq. social problems, 223
Procrustean bed, 79 Revolution, w hy Socialism lost out in rev
Proletariat, long enslaved, 199; a class of olution of 1848, 279; political, should
432 Index
precede social, nearly all German So movement, 43; Slavophiles, 235; 63, 79,
cialists hold, 289; political and social, 212, 275, 365; and on various pages of
must go together, 293; not improvised, introduction and Nectlau sketch
323; poverty not all-sufficient factor,
370; despair as factor of, 370; can be Sabine, George H., 14
waged only at definite historic mo Saint-Simon, Count Gaude Henri de
ments, 371; means war, 372; and rev Rouvroy, founder of French Social
olutionary violence, 372; political and ism, 278
social, 372; political aspect of a social, Santillan, de, Diego A bid, editor o f Span
373; military dictatorship versus social, ish volumes of Bakunins writings, 21
372; social revolution international in Schelling, 32
character, 374; cannot be improvised, Schuize-Delitzsch, 285, 386
374; role of individuals in, 374; organ Science, universal, an unattainable ideal,
ization and, 375; an act of justice, 375; 56; and belief, 70; properties and limits
proximity of social, 374; (1848), 376; of, 70; mission of, 70; and life, 70;
political force has to be destroyed by theological and metaphysical survivals
violence in, 376; popular, feared by in, 72; co-ordination of, 73; and gov
bourgeois democrats, 377; humanness ernment, 77; and organization of so
in revolutionary tactics, 377; social rev ciety, 80; modem, deals in falsities, 81;
olution must be simultaneous revolution proletariat must take possession of, 82;
of city workers and peasantry, 378; in in transitional period, 412
time of, deeds count more than theories, Scientific Communism, 301
396; by decrees doomed to failure, 397; Scientific Communists, 387
French, in 1793, neither Socialist nor Scientific Socialists, 386
materialist, but bourgeois, Jacobin, Scientists, not excepted from workings of
metaphysical, political, and idealist, 414; law of equality, 252
French (1789), see French Revolution Second Empire, 393
Revolution, English (1688), 10 Secret societies, is Belgium and France,
Revolution, French (1789), see French , *77
Revolution Siberia, Bakunin exiled to, 41; escapes
Revolution, French (1848), 18 from, 42
Revolution (March) in Berlin, 18 Sisyphus, 61
Revolution, Social, see Social Revolution Slavery, in Nature, 87
Revolution, Spanish (1873), 19 Slavic federation, to unite all Slavs, Poles,
Revolutionary Question (The): Federal and Russians, proposed by Bakunin, 39;
ist^ Socialism, and Anti-Theologism , intended also to liberate Slavs living
22 under rule of Prussia, Austro-Hungary,
Revolutionary tactics, rationale of, 351 et and Turkey, 39
seq. Social contract, theory of, 13$; lack of
Revolutions, not improvised, 323 moral discernment in the State preced
Richard, Albert, letter from Bakunin to, ing original, 136-, as criterion of good
379 and bad, 136
Robespierre, 414 Social-Democratic Alliance, 382
Rocker, Rudolf, introduction, 17 et seq.; Social-Democratic Party, 290
biographical sketch of G . P. Maximoff, Social-Democratic program examined, 289
25-27 et seq.
RolUn, Albert, 39 Social justice, incompatible with existence
Rollin, Ledru, 39 of State, 224
Roman Catholic Church, Jesuits and Jes- Social revolution, religion can be de
uitesses, 62; wretched Paraguayan Re stroyed only by, 120; will create moral
public long ruled by Jesuits, 79; Cath environment, 155; Italian peasantry
constitute vast and powerful army of,
olic States, each had one or more
205; on the morrow of the, 409 et seq.;
patron saints, 346; Catholic civilization,
all classes will disappear in, except two
402; 109, i n , 118, 208,251,392, 395, 396 the city and rural proletariat, 410;
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 136; fallacy of, terrorism alien to a genuine, 413; 203,
idjs school, 167; 30
393. 4
Ruge, Arnold, 34, 35, 36 Social science, mission and limits of, 76;
Russia, youth movement, 43; Zernlya y and folk instincts, 367
Volya (Land and Freedom), secret Socialism, introduced to Bakunin and
433 Index
German public through book by Dr, Empire a State par excellence, most
Lorenz Stein, j j ; and materialism, lead perfect in Europe, 208; liberal and ab
to truly human morality, 146; based on solute theories of State, 208; sum of
determinism, 155; political liberty with negations of individual liberty, 209;
out it a fraud, 216; and freedom mu modern State surveyed, n o ; must have
tually complementary, 269; and equal centralized, military apparatus, 110; dy
ity, 169; must be federalists in char namics of, and of capitalism identical,
acter, 272; why it lost out in revolution 210; none can satisfy aspirations of the
of 1848, 2791 stateless: Anarchism, 294 people, 211; expansion of, leads to
et seq.; is justice, 295; basic principle growth of abuse, 212; social control of
of, 295; state Socialism rejected, 295; its power a necessary safeguard for
formulated, 409; liberty essential to, liberty, 212; democratic State a contra
409; 31 diction in terms, 222; World State,
Socialism, State, theories of, weighed, 277 attempted many rimes, always a failure,
et seq. 224; not the Fatherland, but the ab
Socialist attitude, can be developed in straction, the metaphysical, mystical,
children only in a Socialist society, 336
Socialists, bourgeois, 280,283; intermediary [lolmcal, juridical fiction of the Father-
and, 324; is younger brother of
group, 2821 danger of State cult among, Church, 346
282 State centralization, its effects, 256 et seq.;
Socialists, scientific, 386 destructive of liberty, 256; lesson of
Society, not a product of a contract, 144; Switzerland, 256; in Germany, 257; in
revolt against, inconceivable, 144, 1571 France, 258
and individual, 157; no humanity out State Socialism, theories of, weighed, 277
side of, 158; acted upon by individuals, et seq.
1581 as result of man's original fall, 163;
as result of limitation of liberty, 166 Statism and Anarchism, 15; no mention of
Society of Jesus, see Jesuits it in Carrs biography of Bakunin, 16;
Socio-economic factors, and psychologi in Spanish, 21; only the first part pub
cal, 367 et seq. lished, 23; note on Russian title, 418
Sociology, its tasks, 75 Statistics, as a science possible only on
Solger, Reinhold, letters from Bakunin to, basis of social determinism, 101
35 Stein, Dr. Lorenz, book by, introduces
Solidarity, class, stronger than solidarity Socialism to Bakunin and to German
. of ideas, 368
Sorcery, cult of, n o ; idea of God be E ublic, 35
Eov, George, 20
comes separated from sorcerer, i n Srimer, Max, 39
Soul, immortal, must be soul of absolute Stock, P. V ., 20
being, 161 Strikes, 382-384; train workers for ulti
Source bibliography, 416 mate struggle, 384; general, 383
Source notes, 417 Struggle for existence, is universal law, 169
Spanish Revolution, 19 Suffrage, universal, under capitalism, 213;
Spinoza, 61 in past history, 213; Proudhon on, 214;
Stankevich, dies, 35; 32 Napoleon III built power on, 217; Bis
State, supreme law of, 139; aims to take marck made it basis of his Knouto-Ger-
place of humanity, 139; perpetual war manic Empire, 217
price of its existence, 141; crimes are Summation, by Bakunin, 338 et seq.; writ
moral climate of, 141; crime, the priv ten in 1871, says Nettiau, 3470
ilege of the State, 141; morality of, Swiss Jura Federation, won for anti-auth
according to Machiavelli, 142; a his oritarian Socialist concepts, 45
torically necessary evil, 145; takes place Switzerland, 45, 301
SyndikaUst, Der, Berlin, 20
of society in idealistic theory, 160; gen
eral outlook, 206; idea of analyzed, 206;
Tchemishevsky movement, 43
premise of theory of, is negation of Terrorism, alien to genuine social revolu
man's liberty, 206; abstraction of, hides tion, 413
concrete factor of class exploitation, Tertullian, 61
207; and the Church, 207; abstraction Tochetti, James, 25
of, in real life, 208; could not exist Tools, invention of, marks first phase of
without a privileged body, 208; Russian civilization, 170
434 Index
Totalitarian State, long yearned for by Volks-Staat, 286
Germans, 257 Voltaire, ti, 62
Tschaadaev, P. A ., 33
Turgeniev, Ivan, 35 Wages, iron law of, 183
Turgeniev, Nikolai, Dekrabist, 37 Wars, mainly economic in motivation, 170
Wealth, production of, necessarily a so
United States of America, Bakunin visits cial act and incompatible with per
San Francisco and New York, 42; slave sonal salvation, 161
states in, 188; ruled by bourgeois class, Weitling, Wilhelm, German Communist,
while mass of toilers live under condi arrest of, 35
tions as bad as those in monarchic Wilhelm I, 135
States, 212; federalism of Southern W ill, determined by structure of organ
States based on hideous social reality, ism, 97; determined at every moment,
276; by iniquitous war against repub 104; ruled by universal inevitability,
lican States of North, Southern group 104
nearly succeeded in destroying finest William I, King, 180
political organization in mankind's his Winstanley, 10
tory, 276; 321 Women, marriage, and family, 32$; equal
hts for, 326
United States of Europe, 274
United States of the World, 274 3 , is highest law of life, 87
Utin, Nicholas, intrigues of, against Ba Workers, socialistic by instinct, 315; what
kunin, 47 they lack, 315 er seq.; 199, 203, 205, 307;
see various references to, in discussion
Versailles National Assembly, <S8 of First International, 301 et seq.; and
Villages, civil war in, 406 et seq. see entries under City workers
Violence, subject of host of arguments and Workers Deputies lose proletarian out
debates, 14; license to use it against look, 215
tyranny is in Christian and Anglo- Workers Social-Democratic Party, of
Saxon tradition, 14; State denotes, s u ; Germany, 289
revolutionary violence, 372; political W orld State, attempted many times, al
force has to be destroyed by, in revol ways a failure, 224
ution, 376
Vogt, Adolf, 3d Youth movement in Russia, 43
Vogt, Karl, 37
Vogt, Professor, at bedside when Bakunin Zemlya y Volya, (Land and Freedom),
dies, 48; 35, 36 secret movement in Russia, 43