Michael Bakunin
L’Almanach du Peuple pour 1872[1]
The immense task that the International Workers’ Association has set for itself, that of the definite and complete emancipation of the workers and the people’s labour from the yoke of all exploiters of this labour, from the bosses, from the owners of raw materials and of the instruments of production, in short from all the representatives of capital, is not only an economic or simply material undertaking, it is at the same time and to the same degree a social, philosophical and moral undertaking; it is also, if you will, an eminently political work, but only in the sense of the destruction of all politics, by the abolition of States.
We do not believe it necessary to demonstrate that in the current political, legal and social organisation of the most civilised countries, the economic emancipation of the workers is impossible and that consequently to achieve it and to realise it fully, it will be necessary to destroy all current institutions: State, Church, Law Court, Bank, University, Officialdom, Army and Police, which are in fact only so many fortresses erected by privilege against the proletariat; and it is not enough to overthrow them in one country, they must be overthrown in all countries, because since the foundation of modern States in the 17th and 18th centuries, there has existed between all these institutions, across the borders of all countries, an ever-increasing solidarity and a very strong international alliance.
The task that the International Workers’ Association has set itself is therefore nothing less than the complete liquidation of the political, religious, legal and social world currently existing, and its replacement by a new economic, philosophical and social world. But such a gigantic undertaking could never be accomplished if it did not have at its disposal two equally powerful, equally gigantic levers, and each complementing the other; the first is the ever-growing intensity of the needs, sufferings and economic demands of the masses; the second is the new social philosophy, an eminently realistic and popular philosophy, theoretically inspired only by real science, that is to say experimental and rational at the same time, and admitting no other bases than human principles, an expression of the eternal needs of the masses, those of equality, liberty and universal solidarity.
Driven by these needs, it is in the name of these principles that the people must prevail. These principles are neither foreign nor even new to it, in the sense that, as we have just said, it has always instinctively carried it within itself. It has always aspired to its emancipation from all the yokes that have enslaved it, and since it is the worker, the provider of society, the creator of civilisation and all wealth - the last slave, the most enslaved of all slaves; and as it cannot emancipate itself without emancipating everyone else with it, it has always aspired to the emancipation of everyone, that is to say, to universal freedom. It has always passionately dreamt of equality, which is the supreme condition of freedom; and unhappy, eternally crushed in the individual existence of each of its children, it has always sought its salvation in solidarity. Up to now, solidaric well-being having been unknown or at least little known, and living contentedly has meant living selfishly at the expense of others through exploitation and subjugation, only the unfortunate, and consequently the masses, have felt and realised fraternity.
Therefore, social science, as a moral doctrine, does nothing more than develop and formulate popular instincts. But between these instincts and this science, there is nevertheless an abyss that must be bridged. For if just instincts had sufficed for the liberation of peoples, they would have been liberated long ago. These instincts did not prevent the masses from accepting, in the so melancholic, so tragic course of their history, all the religious, political, economic and social absurdities of which they have been eternally the victims.
It is true that the cruel experiences through which they were condemned to pass were not all lost on the masses. These experiences created within them a kind of historical consciousness and a traditional, practical knowledge, which very often serves as their substitute for theoretical knowledge. For example, we can be certain that today no people of Western Europe will again allow itself to be led astray by a new religious or messianic charlatan or by any duplicitous politician. We can also say that the need for an economic and social revolution is keenly felt today amongst the popular masses of Europe; for if the collective instinct of the masses had not so clearly, so deeply, so resolutely expressed itself in this direction, there would be no socialists in the world, even if they were men of the greatest genius, who would have been able to rouse them.
The people are ready; they are suffering greatly, and, what is more, they are beginning to understand that they are not at all obliged to suffer, and, tired of foolishly directing their aspirations towards heaven, they are no longer willing to show much patience on earth. The masses, in short, independently even from any propaganda, have sincerely become socialists. The universal and profound sympathy that the Paris Commune has found amongst the proletariat of all countries is proof of this.
But the masses are might, at least the essential element of all might; what do they lack to overthrow an order of things that they detest? They lack two things: organisation and science, precisely the two things that today constitute and have always constituted the power of all governments.
***
So, organisation, first of all, which, moreover, cannot be established without the assistance of science. Thanks to military organisation, a battalion of a thousand armed men can, and indeed do, hold in check a million people who are also armed, but disorganised. Thanks to bureaucratic organisation, the State, with a few hundred thousand employees, can subjugate vast countries. Therefore, to create a popular power capable of crushing the military and civil power of the State, it is necessary to organise the proletariat.
This is precisely what the International Workers’ Association is doing, and the day that it has admitted and organised within its ranks half, a third, a quarter, or even just a tenth of the proletariat of Europe, the State, States, will have ceased to exist. Since the organisation of the International has as its aim not the creation of new States or despotisms, but the root-and-branch destruction of all specific forms of domination, it must have an essentially different character from the organisation of States. Just as the former is authoritarian, artificial and violent, foreign and hostile to the natural development of popular interests and instincts, the organisation of the International must be free, natural, and entirely in accordance with these interests and instincts. But what is the natural organisation of the masses? It is that which is based on the different conditions of their real, daily life, by different kinds of work, it is organisation by trades. Once all industries are represented in the International, including the different uses of land, its organisation, the organisation of the popular masses will be accomplished.
{For it is indeed enough that one worker in ten earnestly and with full awareness join the Association for the remaining nine-tenths outside the organisation to nevertheless be subject to its invisible influence, and in critical moments, without suspecting it themselves, follow its guidance, as much as this is necessary for the salvation of the proletariat.}
It might be objected that this method of organising the International’s influence on the masses seems to seek to establish, on the ruins of the old authorities and existing governments, a new system of authority and a new government. But this would be a profound error. The organised action of the International on the masses will always be distinguished from all government and from the action of all States by this essential characteristic of being only the natural, unofficial action of a simple opinion, excluding any authority.[2] Between the power of the State and that of the International is the same difference that exists between the official action of the State and the natural action of a club. The International has and will never have anything but a great power of opinion and will never be anything but the organisation of the natural action of individuals upon the mases, whereas the State and all the institutions of the State - Church, university, law court, bureaucracy, treasury, police and army - demand their passive obedience, doubtless within the always very flexible limits recognised and determined by laws, doubtless without neglecting to corrupt as much as they can the opinion and will of the subjects of the State, yet apart from this opinion and this will, and most often against them.
The State is the organised authority, domination and power of the propertied and so-called enlightened classes over the masses; the International is the deliverance of the masses. Since the State never wants and can never want anything but the enslavement of the masses, it calls for their submission. The International, wanting nothing else than their complete freedom, calls for their revolt. But in order to make this revolt in turn powerful and capable of overthrowing the domination of the State and of the privileged classes solely represented by the State, the International must organise itself. To achieve this goal, it employs only two means which, even if they are not always legal - legality being, in most countries, nothing more than the legal consecration of privilege, that is to say, of injustice - are, from the point of view of human rights, equally legitimate. These two means, as we have said, are first the propagation of its ideas, and, second, the organisation of the natural effect of its members on the masses.
To anyone who would claim that such organised action is yet another attack on the freedom of the mases, an attempt to create a new authoritarian power, we would reply that they are either a sophist or a fool. So much the worse for those who ignore the natural and social law of human interdependence, to the point of imaging that the absolute independence of individuals and masses is possible, or even desirable. To desire that is to desire the very annihilation of society, for all social life is nothing other than this incessant mutual dependence of individuals and the masses. Every individual, even the most intelligent, the most strong, and especially the intelligent and the strong, are at every moment of their lives both its producers and its products. The very freedom of each individual is the ever-renewed result of this mass of material, intellectual and moral influences that all the individuals around him, that the society in which he is born, develops and dies, exerts upon him. To want to escape this influence, in the name of a transcendent, divine absolutely selfish and self-sufficient freedom, is the tendency towards non-being; to want to renounce exercising it upon others is to renounce all social action, the very expression of your thoughts and feelings, is again leading to non-being; this independence so extolled by idealists and metaphysicians, and the individual freedom conceived in this sense - is therefore nothingness.
In nature as in human society, which is nothing more than this same nature, everything that lives only lives on the supreme condition of intervening in the most positive way, and as powerfully as its nature allows, in the lives of others. The abolition of this mutual influence would therefore be death. And when we demand the freedom of the masses, we do not in any way intend to abolish any natural influences, nor those of any individual or group of individuals who exert their influence upon them; what we want is the abolition of artificial, legal, official influences. If the Church and the State could be private institutions, we would undoubtedly oppose them, but we would not protest their right to exist. But we object to them because, while undoubtedly private institutions in the sense that they exist solely for the particular interests of the privileged classes, they nonetheless use the collective force of the masses organised for this purpose to impose themselves in an authoritarian, official, violent manner upon the masses. If the International were to organise itself into a State, we, its convinced and passionate supporters, would become its most implacable enemies.
Yet it is precisely that it cannot organise as a State; it cannot, first of all, because, as its name clearly indicates, it abolishes all borders; and there is no State without borders, the realisation of the universal State, dreamt of by conquering peoples and the greatest despots of the world, having proven impossible historically. Whoever says State, therefore, necessarily implies several States, inwardly oppressors and exploiters, more or less hostile conquerors outwardly - says negation of humanity. The universal State, or the people’s State spoken of by the German communists, can therefore only mean one thing: the abolition of the State.
The International Workers’ Association would be meaningless if it did not strive irresistibly for the abolition of the State. It organises the masses only for the purpose of this destruction. And how does it organise them? Not from top down, by imposing on the social diversity produced by the diversity of work within the masses, or by imposing on the natural life of the masses, a false unity and order, as States do; but, on the contrary, from the bottom up, taking as a starting point the social existence of the masses, their real aspirations, and rousing them, helping them to group together, to harmonise and balance themselves in accordance with this natural diversity of occupations and circumstances. {Such is the specific purpose of the organisation of the trade sections.
{We have said that in order to organise the masses, to establish in a robust manner the benevolent effect of the International Workers’ Association on them, it would suffice, strictly speaking, for only one worker out of ten of the same trade to be part of the respective Section. This is easily understood. In times of great political or economic crisis, when the instinct of the masses, heated to a red-hot state, opens itself to all favourable influences, when these herds of enslaved men, bent, crushed, but never resigned, finally revolt against their yoke, yet feel disorientated and powerless because they are completely disorganised, ten, twenty or thirty men who understand each other and are well organised amongst themselves, and who know where they are going and what they want, will easily lead one hundred, two hundred, three hundred or even more.
{We saw this recently in the Paris Commune. The serious organisation, barely begun during the siege, was neither thoroughly perfect nor very strong; and yet it was sufficient to create a formidable power of resistance.
{What will it be like when the International [Workers’] Association is better organised; when it has within it a much larger number of sections, especially many agricultural sections, and, in each section, double and triple the number of members it now contains? What will it be like especially when each of its members knows, better than they do now, the ultimate goal and true principles of the International, as well as the means to achieve its triumph? The International will become an irresistible power.}
***
But for the international, thus organised from the bottom up, to become a real force, a serious power, each member in each section must be far more deeply imbued with the principles of the International than they are today. Only under this condition will it be able, in time of peace and clam, to effectively fulfil the mission of propagandist and apostle, and in times of struggle, that of a true revolutionary. When we speak of the principles of the International, we mean none other than those contained in the preamble to our general statues adopted by the Geneva Congress. They are so few that we ask permission to summarise them here:
1. The emancipation of labour must be the work of the workers themselves;
2. The efforts of the workers to achieve their emancipation must not aim to create new privileges, but to establish equal rights and duties for all (men living on earth), and to abolish all class domination;
3. The economic subjugation of the workers to the monopolist of raw materials and means of production is the source of servitude in all its forms: social misery, mental degradation, political submission;
4. For this reason, the economic emancipation of the working class is the great goal to which every political movement must be subordinated as a simple means;
5. The emancipation of the workers is not merely a local or national problem; on the contrary, this problem concerns all civilised nations, its solution necessarily being contingent upon their theoretical and practical cooperation.
6. The Association, as well as all its members, recognise that TRUTH, JUSTICE, MORALITY must be the basis of their conduct towards all people, without distinction of colour, belief or nationality;
7. Finally, they consider it a duty to demand the rights of man and of the citizen, not only for members of the Association, but also for anyone fulfilling their duties. - “No duties without rights, no rights without duties.”
We all know that this programme, so simple, so just and which expresses in such an unpretentious and unoffensive manner the most legitimate and most humane demands of the proletariat, contains within itself, precisely because it is an exclusively human programme, all the seeds of an immense social revolution: the overthrow of everything that is and the creation of a new world.
This is what must now be explained and made perfectly understandable and clear to all members of the International. This programme brings with it a new science, a new social philosophy that must replace all the old religions, and an entirely new politics, international politics, which, as such, we hasten to add, can have no other aim than the abolition of States. For all members of the International to conscientiously fulfil their dual duty as propagandists and revolutionaries, each of them must be imbued as much as possible with this science, this philosophy and this politics. It is not enough for them to know and say that they want the economic emancipation of the workers, the full enjoyment of their product for every individual, the abolition of classes and political subjugation, the realisation of the fullness of human rights and the perfect equivalence of duties and rights for every individual - the achievement of human fraternity, in short. All this is without doubt very good and very right, but if the workers of the International are introduced to these great truths without delving into their conditions, consequences and spirit, and if they are content to repeat them over and over in this general form, they run the risk of soon turning them into empty and sterile words, into misunderstood commonplaces.
***
But, it will be said, not all workers, even if they are members of the International, can be learned; and is it not enough that within this Association there is a group of men who possess, as completely as is possible in our day, the science, philosophy and politics of socialism, so that the majority, the people of the International, by obeying faithfully their direction and their fraternal command ([in the] style of M. Gambetta, the Jacobin-dictator par excellence), cannot deviate from the path which must lead them to the definitive emancipation of the proletariat?
This is the reasoning that we have heard quite often, not openly expressed - they are neither sincere enough nor courageous enough for that - but developed covertly, with all sorts of more or less skilful reservations and demagogic compliments addressed to the supreme wisdom and omnipotence of the sovereign people, by the authoritarian party within the International. We have always passionately fought against this, because we are convinced that as soon as the International [Workers’] Association were to split into two groups: one comprising the vast majority and made up of members whose only learning would be a blind faith in the theoretical and practical wisdom of their leaders; and the other made up of only a few dozen individual-directors - this institution which is supposed to emancipate Humanity would transform itself into a kind of oligarchic State, the worst of all States; and what is more, that this clear-sighted, learned and skilful minority which would assume, with all the responsibilities, all the rights of government, all the more absolute, as its despotism is carefully hidden under the appearance of an obsequious respect for the will and for the resolutions of the sovereign people, resolutions always prompted by itself to this so-called popular will; - that this minority, we say, obeying the necessities and circumstances of its privileged position and suffering the fate of all governments, would soon become increasingly despotic, malevolent and reactionary. {This is precisely what happened today in the Geneva International.}
The International [Workers’] Association will only be able to become an instrument of emancipation for humanity when it has first emancipated itself, and it will only do so when, creasing to be divided into two groups - the majority of blind tools and the minority of skilful manipulators - it has instilled in the reflective consciousness of each of its members the science, philosophy and politics of socialism.
[1] This article was included with some additions and minor changes in “Protestation de l'Alliance” written between 4 and 24 July 1871 and included in volume VI of Michel Bakounine, Œuvres (Paris: P.-V. Stock, 1913). We have added significant additions from this text enclosed by curly brackets ({}). The "Protestation de l'Alliance" version is included by Robert M. Cutler (trans. and ed.) in The Basic Bakunin: Writings 1869-1871 (Buffalo, N.Y.: Promethus Books, 1994). (Translator)
[2] In “Protestation de l’Alliance” the sentence after "profound error" is expanded upon: {The government of the International, if government there is, or rather its organised action on the masses, will always be distinguished from all governments and from the action of all states by this essential property, of never being anything but the organisation of the action - unofficial and not vested with any authority or political force whatsoever, but entirely natural - of a more or less numerous group of individuals inspired by the same thought and tending towards the same goal, first on the opinion of the masses, and only then, through this opinion more or less modified by the propaganda of the International, on their will, on their actions. While governments, armed with authority, power and material force, which some claim to derive from God, others from their superior intelligence, and still others from the popular will itself, expressed and ascertained by means of that sleight of hand called universal suffrage, violently impose themselves on the masses, forcing them to obey them, to execute their decrees, without even, most of the time, giving the appearance of consulting their feelings, their needs and their will.} (Translator)