Part 4 (1/2)

We have seen that in their criticism of the ”political const.i.tution,”

the ”fathers” of anarchy always based themselves on the Utopian point of view. Each one of them based his theories upon an abstract principle.

Stirner upon that of the ”Ego,” Proudhon upon that of the ”Contract.”

The reader has also seen that these two ”fathers” were individualists of the first water.

The influence of Proudhonian individualism was, for a time, very strong in the Romance countries (France, Belgium, Italy, Spain) and in the Slaav countries, especially Russia. The internal history of the International Working Men's a.s.sociation is the history of this struggle between Proudhonism and the modern Socialism of Marx. Not only men like Tolain, Chemale or Murat, but men very superior to them, such as De Paepe, _e.g._, were nothing but more or less opinionated, more or less consistent ”Mutualists.” But the more the working cla.s.s movement developed, the more evident it became that ”Mutualism” could not be its theoretical expression. At the International Congresses the Mutualists were forced by the logic of facts to vote for the Communist resolutions. This was the case, _e.g._, at Brussels in the discussion on landed property.[32] Little by little the left wing of the Proudhonian army left the domain of Individualism to intrench itself upon that of ”Collectivism.”

The word ”Collectivism” was used at this period in a sense altogether opposed to that which it now has in the mouths of the French Marxists, like Jules Guesde and his friends. The most prominent champion of ”Collectivism” was at this time Michel Bakounine.

In speaking of this man we shall pa.s.s over in silence his propaganda in favour of the Hegelian philosophy, as far as he understood it, the part he played in the revolutionary movement of 1848, his Panslavist writings in the beginning of the sixties, and his pamphlet, ”Roumanow, Pougatchew or Pestel”[33] (London, 1862), in which he proposed to go over to Alexander II., if the latter would become the ”Tzar of the Moujiks.”

Here we are exclusively concerned with his theory of Anarchist Collectivism.

A member of the ”League of Peace and Liberty,” Bakounine, at the Congress of this a.s.sociation at Berne in 1869, called upon the League--an entirely bourgeois body--to declare in favour of ”the economical and social equalisation of cla.s.ses and of individuals.” Other delegates, among whom was Chaudey, reproached him with advocating Communism. He indignantly protested against the accusation.

”Because I demand the economic and social equalisation of cla.s.ses and individuals, because, with the Workers' Congress of Brussels, I have declared myself in favour of collective property, I have been reproached with being a Communist. What difference, I have been asked, is there between Communism and Collectivism. I am really astounded that M.

Chaudey does not understand this difference, he who is the testamentary executor of Proudhon! I detest Communism, because it is the negation of liberty, and I cannot conceive anything human without liberty. I am not a Communist, because Communism concentrates and causes all the forces of society to be absorbed by the State, because it necessarily ends in the centralisation of property in the hands of the State, while I desire the abolition of the State--the radical extirpation of this principle of the authority and the tutelage of the State, which, under the pretext of moralising and civilising men, has until now enslaved, oppressed, exploited, and depraved them. I desire the organisation of society and of collective or social property from below upwards, by means of free a.s.sociation, and not from above downwards by means of some authority of some sort. Desiring the abolition of the State, I desire the abolition of property individually hereditary, which is nothing but an inst.i.tution of the State, nothing but a result of the principle of the State. This is the sense, gentlemen, in which I am a Collectivist, and not at all a Communist.”

In another speech at the same Congress Bakounine reiterates what he had already said of ”Statist” Communism. ”It is not we, gentlemen,” he said, ”who systematically deny all authority and all tutelary powers, and who in the name of Liberty demand the very abolition of the ”authoritarian”

principle of the State; it is not we who will recognise any sort of political and social organisation whatever, that is not founded upon the most complete liberty of every one.... But I am in favour of collective property, because I am convinced that so long as property, individually hereditary, exists, the equality of the first start, the realisation of equality, economical and social, will be impossible.”[34]

This is not particularly lucid as a statement of principles. But it is sufficiently significant from the ”biographical” point of view.

We do not insist upon the inept.i.tude of the expression ”the economic and social equalisation of cla.s.ses;” the General Council of the International dealt with that long ago.[35] We would only remark that the above quotations show that Bakounine--

1. Combats the State and ”Communism” in the name of ”the most complete liberty of everybody;”

2. Combats property, ”individually hereditary,” in the name of economic equality;

3. Regards this property as ”an inst.i.tution of the State,” as a ”consequence of the very principles of the State;”

4. Has no objection to individual property, if it is not hereditary; has no objection to the right of inheritance, if it is not individual.

In other words:

1. Bakounine is quite at one with Proudhon so far as concerns the negation of the State and Communism;

2. To this negation he adds another, that of property, individually hereditary;

3. His programme is nothing but a total arrived at by the adding up of the two abstract principles--that of ”liberty,” and that of ”equality;”

he applies these two principles, one after the other, and independently one of the other, in his criticism of the existing order of things, never asking himself whether the results of these two negations are reconcilable with one another.

4. He understands, just as little as Proudhon, the origin of private property and the causal connection between its evolution and the development of political forms.

5. He has no clear conception of the meaning of the words ”individually hereditary.”

If Proudhon was a Utopian, Bakounine was doubly so, for his programme was nothing but a Utopia of ”Liberty,” reinforced by a Utopia of ”Equality.” If Proudhon, at least to a very large extent, remained faithful to his principle of the contract, Bakounine, divided between liberty and equality, is obliged from the very outset of his argument constantly to throw over the former for the benefit of the latter, and the latter for the benefit of the former. If Proudhon is a Proudhonian _sans reproche_, Bakounine is a Proudhonian adulterated with ”detestable” Communism, nay even by ”Marxism.”

In fact, Bakounine has no longer that immutable faith in the genius of the ”master” Proudhon, which Tolain seems to have preserved intact.