Micheal Bakunin
19-28 October 1871
My dear friends
Anyone who has read the truly perfidious letter that Mazzini has just sent to the workers’ representatives at the Congress of Rome must understand, if they could have doubted it until now, that this Congress was convened in Rome, at Mazzini’s instigation, to carry out an upset, a coup d’etat, not revolutionary against the system which today governs Italy, but reactionary against the new ideas and new aspirations which, since the glorious and fecund insurrection of the Paris Commune, have begun to visibly stir the proletariat and youth of Italy.
Do I need to explain to you how and why these ideas are hated by Mazzini? He has said it sufficiently himself in all the articles he has published in Roma del Popolo, where he knowingly slandered the Paris Commune, and our beautiful and great International Workers’ Association, whose principles and actions, a spontaneous expression of the popular aspirations of the multitudes of Europe and America, are naturally contrary to the establishment in Italy of his theocratic, authoritarian and centralised Republic.
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This is probably why Mazzini forbade the Workers’ Congress from discussing major religious and political issues. At first glance, this second declaration proposed by Mazzini seems perfectly reasonable; but on closer inspection, a new trap is revealed. What are the major issues that he places outside the economic question, as if they are completely foreign to it, and as if they should concern other classes more than the working masses?
These are the religious question and the political question; but, resolved apart from the economic question, these two questions can only be resolved against the proletariat, as has always actually happened until now.
The International, for its parts, deals with these questions, and Mazzini cannot forgive it for such audacity; but it treats them as questions inseparable from the economic question, and as a result, it resolves them in favour of the proletariat.
The International does not reject politics in general; it will inevitably have to involve itself in it as long as it is compelled to fight against the bourgeois class. It rejects only bourgeois politics and bourgeois religion, because the former establishes the exploitative domination of the bourgeoisie and the latter sanctifies and consecrates it. The bourgeoisie is sacred. What Mazzini wants is to harness the proletariat to the chariot of bourgeois politics, and that is precisely what we do not want.
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In this respect, Mazzini has rendered us an immense service. He has demonstrated that since the youth had separated itself from him in thought, it must also separate itself from him in action; he excommunicated it, and he was a thousand times right. This time, he was far more frank and loyal towards it than it had dared, or still dares, to be to itself; and he is challenging it to show itself to be serious and virile.
Yes, this youth must now have the courage to recognise and proclaim its complete and definitive separation from Mazzini’s politics, conspiracy and republican endeavours, or risk being annihilated and condemned to inertia and shameful impotence. It must inaugurate its own politics!
What can these politics be? Apart from the Mazzinian system, which is that of the Republic-State, there is only one: that of the Republic-Commune, the Republic-Federation, the socialist and frankly popular Republic, that of ANARCHY. This is the politics of the social revolution, which seeks the abolition of the Sate and the economic and fully free organisation of the people, an organisation from the bottom up by means of federation.
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The International is powerful because it imposes no absolute dogma, no infallible doctrine on the people; because its programme formulates nothing other than the people’s own instincts, their real aspirations. It is powerful because it does not seek at all, as you have always done, to create an infallible power outside the people; and because it does nothing other than organise the power of the people. And it can do it; because, since it does not presume to impose on the people a programme received from above, and therefore foreign and contrary to popular instincts, it has nothing to fear from the organisation of this spontaneous power of the masses’ numerical strength. [...]
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Homeland represents the undeniable and sacred right of every man, of every group of men, associations, communes, regions, nations, to live, to feel, to think, to will and to act in their own way, and this way is always the undeniable result of a long historical development.
We therefore bow before tradition, before history; or rather we recognise them, not because they present themselves to us as abstract barriers, raised metaphysically, juridically and politically by learned interpreters and professors of the past, but only because they have really passed into the blood and flesh, into the real thoughts and will of current populations. We are told: This land - the canton of Ticino, for example - obviously belongs to the Italian family: language, customs, it had everything in common with the Lombard people, therefore it must be part of the great Italian unity. And we reply that this is a completely false conclusion. If there really is serious identity between Ticino and Lombardy, there is no doubt that Ticino will spontaneously unite with Lombardy. If it does not, if it does not feel the slightest desire to do so, this only proves that real history, which has continued from generation to generation in the real life of the Ticino people, and which has made them what they are, is different from the history written in books.
On the other hand, it must be noted that the real history of individuals, as of peoples, does not proceed by positive development, but very often by the negation of the past and by revolt against it; and this is the right of life, the inalienable right of present generations, the guarantee of their freedom. Provinces that have been united for a long time always have the right to separate from one another; and they may be driven to do so by various reasons, religious, political, economic. The State claims on the contrary to hold them together by force, and in this it is greatly mistaken. The State is forced marriage, and we raise against it the banner of free union.
Just as we are convinced that by abolishing religious marriage, civil and juridical marriage, we restore the life, the reality, the morality of natural marriage based solely on human respect and the freedom of the two people, man and women, who love each other; that by recognising the freedom of each of them to separate from the other whenever they wish, and without needing to ask permission from anyone; that by also denying the need for permission to unite, and generally rejecting any intervention by any authority in their union, we will make them more closely united, much more faithful and loyal to each other; similarly, we are also convinced that when the cursed power of the State is no longer there to force individuals, associations, communes, provinces, regions to live together, they will be much more closely linked, and will constitute a much more vibrant, more real, more powerful unity than the one they are forced to form today, under the equally crushing pressure of the State for all.
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Mazzini and all the unitarists contradict themselves when on the one hand they speak to you of the deep, intimate fraternity that exists in this group of twenty-five million Italians united by language, traditions, customs, faith, and community of aspirations, and on the other hand they want to maintain, what am I saying?, magnify the power of the State, necessary - they say - for the maintenance of unity. But if they are indeed so indissolubly linked, forcing them into union is superfluous, a nonsense; if on the contrary you believe it necessary to compel them, it means that you are convinced that they are not well linked, and that you are lying, that you want to mislead them about themselves, when you talk to them about their union. Social union, the true result of the combination of traditions, habits, customs, ideas, current interests and common aspirations, is living, fecund, real unity. Political unity, the State, is the fiction, the abstraction of unity; and not only does it harbour discord, but it also artificially produces it where, without this intervention of the State, living unity would undoubtedly exist.
That is why socialism is federalist, and why the entire International enthusiastically welcomed the programme of the Paris Commune. Furthermore, the Commune explicitly proclaimed in its manifestos that what it wanted was by no means the dissolution of French national unity, but its resurrection, its consolidation, its revitalisation, and full and real popular freedom. It wanted the unity of the nation, of the people, of French society, not that of the State.
Mazzini pushed his hatred of the Commune to the point imbecility. He claims that the system proclaimed by the latest revolution in Paris would take us back to the Middle Ages, that is to say to the division of the entire world into a multitude of small centres foreign to each other, and ignorant of each other. He does not understand, the poor man, that between the medieval Commune and the modern Commune, there is all the difference produced not only in books, but also in customs, aspirations, ideas, interests, and the needs of the people.by five centuries of history. The Communes of Italy, in their origin, were truly isolated, each being centres of entirely independent, not interconnected, political and social existence, and necessarily having to be self-sufficient.
What a difference today! Material, intellectual, moral interests have created amongst all the members of the same nation, what I am saying, amongst the different nations themselves, a social unity so powerful and real that everything States do today to paralyse and destroy it remains powerless. Unity resists everything, and it will survive States.
When States have disappeared, the living, fecund, beneficial unity of regions and nations, and of the internationality of the entire civilised world first, then of all the people of the earth, by the means of free federation and organisation from the bottom-up, will develop in all its majesty, not divine, but human.
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But it is important to distinguish between federalism and federalism.
In Italy there exists a tradition of regional federalism, which has now become a political and historical lie. Let us say it once and for all: the past never returns; and it would be a great misfortune if it did. Regional federalism could only be an aristocratic-consortiumesque institution, because, in relation to communes and workers’ associations, industrial and agricultural, it would still be a top-down political organisation. Truly popular organisation begins on the contrary by an act from below, by the association and by the commune. By organising from the bottom up, federalism then becomes the political institution of socialism, the free and spontaneous organisation of popular life.
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The Mazzinian and Garibaldian workers may well accept the programmes of Mazzini and Garibaldi; in their stomachs, in the emaciated pallor of their children and their comrades in misery and suffering, in their real daily slavery, there will always be something that calls for social revolution! They are all unwittingly socialists, except for a few individuals - perhaps one in a thousand - who, through skill, luck and cunning, have entered or hope to enter into the ranks of the bourgeoisie. All the others, I mean the mass of Mazzinian and Garibaldian workers, are such only by imagination, or even by habit, but in reality they can only be socialist revolutionaries.
And it is your duty today, dear friends, to organise an intelligent, honest, sympathetic, and above all, persistent propaganda to make them understand this. For that, you will need to do nothing more than explain the programme of the International to them, letting them grasp it firsthand. And if, for this purpose, you organise yourselves throughout Italy, and do so in good harmony, without recognising any other leader than your young collectivity itself, I swear to you that at the end of a year there will be no more Mazzinian or Garibaldian workers; that all will have become revolutionary socialists, patriots no doubt, but in the most humane sense of the word, that is to say patriots and internationalists at the same time. You will have thus created the unshakeable foundation for a future social revolution that will save Italy and restore to it the life, the intelligence, and all the initiative that belongs to it amidst the most humanly progressive nations of Europe.
And when you have accomplished this great deed, the workers who were formerly Mazzinians and Garibaldians will themselves become very valuable apostles of “our religion” without God, since, by their very nature, their developed intelligence, though today distorted, and by the experience they have acquired in past struggles under the banners of Mazzini and Garibaldi, they are certainly the most energetic, most devoted and most capable of all the Italian proletariat. They are accustomed to conspiracy and organisation, and this habit will do you valuable services.
Organised, not individually, but collectively in close-knit groups, they will then become the leaders of the great mass of the proletariat, both in the cities and in the countryside. This great mass, which the political programmes of Mazzini and Garibaldi have never been able to inspire, will not know how and will not be able to resist the propaganda of our programme, which is the simplest expression of its deepest and most intimate instincts, and which can be summarised in a few words:
Peace, emancipation and happiness to all the oppressed!
War on all oppressors and exploiters!
Complete restitution to the workers: capital, factories, all the tools of production and raw materials to associations; the land to those who cultivate it with their own hands.
Freedom, justice, fraternity to all human beings born on this earth.
Equality for all.
For all without distinction, all the means of development, education and instruction, and equal opportunities to live by working.
Organisation of society by the free federation, from bottom to top, of workers associations, both industrial and agricultural, scientific as well as artistic and literary, in the commune initially; federation of communes into regions, of regions into nations, and of nations in the fraternal international.
As for the mode of organisation of social life, work and collective property, the programme of the International imposes nothing absolute. The International has neither dogmas nor uniform theories. In this respect, as in any living and free society, many different theories are circulating within it. But it accepts as the fundamental basis of its organisation the spontaneous development and organisation of all associations and all communes in complete autonomy, on the condition however that the associations and communes take as the basis of their organisation the general principles set out earlier, principles that are obligatory to all those who wish to be part of the International. As for the rest, the International relies on the salutary action of the free propaganda of ideas and on the identity and natural balance of interests.
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Consequently, dear friends, what you must devote yourselves to, along with the organisation of the urban workers, are the means to be employed to break the ice that separates the urban proletariat from the people of the countryside, to unite and organise these two peoples into one. The salvation of Italy depends on this. All other classes must disappear from its soil, not as individuals, but as classes. Socialism is not cruel; it is a thousand times more humane than Jacobinism, I mean than political revolution. It bears no ill will towards individuals, not even the most wicked, knowing full well that all individuals, good or bad, are merely the inevitable product of the social position that history and society have created for them. Socialists, it is true, will certainly not be able to prevent the people, in the first surge of their fury, from making a few hundred of the most odious, most bitter and the most dangerous individuals disappear; but once this hurricane has passed, they will oppose with all their energy hypocritical, political and legal butchery, organised in cold blood.
Socialism will wage an inexorable war on “social positions”, not on men; and once these positions have been destroyed and smashed, the men who had occupied them, disarmed and deprived of all means of action, will have become harmless and much less powerful, I assure you, than the most ignorant worker; for their present power does not reside in themselves, in their intrinsic value, but in their wealth and in the support of the State.
The social revolution, therefore, will not only spare them, but, after having toppled them and deprived them of their weapons, will lift them up and say to them: “And now, dear comrades, since you have become our equals, bravely begin to work with us. In work, as in everything else, the first step is difficult, and we will help you fraternally to take it.” Those, then, who are robust and healthy do not want to earn their living by work, will have the right to starve, unless they resign themselves to living humbly and miserably on public charity, which will certainly not deny them the bare essentials.
As for their children, there is no doubt that they will become valiant workers and equal and free men. In society, there will certainly be less luxury, but unquestionably much more wealth; and, moreover, there will be a luxury unknown to all today: the luxury of humanity, the happiness of the full development and complete freedom of each individual within the equality of all.
Such is our idea.
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Organise the proletariat of the cities in the name of revolutionary socialism, and, while doing so, unite it in a single preparatory organisation with the people of the countryside. The uprising of the urban proletariat is no longer sufficient; with it we would only have a political revolution, which would necessarily have against it the natural, legitimate reaction of the rural population, and this reaction, or only the indifference of the peasants, would stifle the revolution of the cities, as happened recently in France. Only a universal revolution is strong enough to overthrow and smash the organised power of the State, supported by all the resources of the wealthy classes. But a universal revolution is a social revolution, a simultaneous revolution of the rural and urban peoples. This is what must be organised - because without preparatory organisation, even the most powerful elements are impotent and ineffective.
We will talk about this organisation another time.
The International lays the foundations; expand it to all of Italy, and the rest will follow naturally.
The International does not destroy nationalities, nations; it embraces them all, without suppressing any. It cannot do otherwise, because its fundamental principle is the widest freedom. The International is not waging war on natural homelands; it is waging it only upon political homelands, on States; and it must wage this war: because, since it seriously desires the full and definitive emancipation of the proletariat, it must necessarily strive for the abolition of all classes, that is to say of all economic privileges, and States are only the organisation and guarantee of the economic privileges and the political domination of classes. In waging war on classes, it must wage it on States. [...]
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And now, dear friends, I have finished, Please excuse me if I have bored you: I wanted to be brief, but I was not able to be. The subject itself carried me away. But in compensation, you have my entire thought. Analyse it, take what suits you, leave what does not suit you, and tell me, with the same frankness with which I have spoken to you, what you think of it, your agreements or your objections.
Only in this way will we be able to reach an understanding and form a free union amongst ourselves.
Michael Bakunin