Michael Bakunin
4 to 24 July 1871
[The leaders have convinced themselves that what they] think and what they want is thought and wanted by their sections, so that they do not even need to consult them to know what they should decide and do on their behalf.
This illusion, this fiction, is unfortunate in every respect. It is particularly unfortunate, first and foremost, with regard to the social morality of the leaders themselves, in that it accustoms them to seeing themselves as absolute masters of a certain mass of men, as permanent leaders whose power is legitimised both by the services they have rendered and by the very duration of that power. Even the best men are easily corrupted, especially when the environment itself fosters corruption through a lack of serious control and constant opposition. In the International, venal corruption is out of the question, because the association is still too poor to provide an income or even fair compensation to any of its leaders. Unlike in the bourgeois world, self-serving calculations and malfeasance are therefore very rare and appear only as exceptions. But there is another kind of corruption to which, unfortunately, the International [Workers’] Association is not unfamiliar: that of vanity and ambition.
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In all men there is a natural instinct for command which has its primary source in this fundamental law of life: that no individual can secure their existence or assert their rights except through struggle. This struggle amongst men began with cannibalism; then, continuing through the centuries under different religious banners, it has passed successively - becoming very slowly, little by little, and even sometime seeming to relapse into its primitive barbarity - through all forms of slavery and serfdom. Today it occurs in the dual guise of the exploitation of wage-labour by capital, and of the political, legal, civil, military, police oppression of the State and the official Churches of States, continuing to awaken in all individuals born into society the desire, the need, sometimes the necessity, to command and exploit others.
We see that the instinct for command, in its primitive essence, is a carnivorous instinct, entirely bestial, entirely savage. Under the influence of the intellectual development of men, it becomes, in a sense, idealised and ennobles its forms, presenting itself as the organ of intelligence and the devoted servant of that abstraction or political fiction called the public good; but fundamentally, it remains just as malevolent, even becoming more so, as it expands and intensifies its influence through the applications of science. If there is a devil in all of human history, it is this principle of command. It alone, with the stupidity and ignorance of the masses, on which it always relies and without which it could not exist, it alone has produced all the miseries, all the crimes, and all the ignominies of history.
And inevitably, this cursed principle is found as a natural instinct in every man, without excepting the best. Everyone carries the seed of it within themselves, and every seed, as we know, by a fundamental law of life, must necessarily develop and grow, provided it finds in its environment favourable conditions for its development. These conditions, in human society, are the stupidity, the ignorance, the apathetic indifference, and the servile habits amongst the masses; so it can rightly be said that the masses themselves produce these exploiters, these oppressors, these despots, these executioners of humanity of whom they are the victims. When they are quiescent and when they patiently endure their abjection and their enslavement, the best men born within them, the most intelligent, the most energetic, those who in a different environment could render immense services to humanity, inevitably become despots. They often become so by deluding themselves and believing they are working for the good of those they oppress. Conversely, in an intelligent, enlightened society, protective of its freedom and willing to defend its rights, even the most selfish, most malevolent individuals inevitably become good. Such is the power of society, a thousand times greater than that of the strongest individuals.
So it is clear that the absence of continuous opposition and control inevitably becomes a source of depravity for all individuals who find themselves invested with any social power; and that those amongst them who are concerned with saving their personal morality should take care not to retain this power for too long, first of all, and then, as long as they hold it, to provoke against themselves this salutary opposition and control.
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This is what the members of the Geneva committees, undoubtedly through ignorance of the dangers they faced from the point of view of their social morality, generally neglected to do. By dint of sacrificing and devoting themselves, they grew accustomed to command and, in a kind of natural and almost inevitable delusion common to those who hold power too long, they came to imagine they were indispensable. This is how, imperceptibly, a kind of governmental aristocracy was formed within the so plainly popular sections of the building workers. We will show shortly what the disastrous consequences were for the organisation of the International Workers’ Association in Geneva.
Need it be said how detrimental this state of affairs is to the sections themselves? It more and more reduces them to nothingness or the status of purely fictitious entities that exist only on paper. With the growing authority of the committees, indifference and ignorance amongst the sections have naturally developed in all matters other than strikes and the payment of dues, a payment that, moreover, is carried out with increasing difficultly and in a very irregular manner. This is a natural consequence of the intellectual and moral apathy of the sections, and this apathy in turn is the equally necessary result of the automatic subordination to which the authoritarianism of the committees has reduced the sections.
Apart from strikes and dues, the building workers’ sections have essentially renounced all judgment, deliberation, intervention on all other matters; they simply defer to the decisions of their committees. “We have elected our committee; it is up to them to decide.” This is what the building workers often reply to those who try to ascertain their opinion on any issue. They have reached the point where they no longer have any opinion at all, like blank sheets of paper on which their committees can write whatever they want. Provided that their committees do not ask them for too much money and do not press them too hard to pay what they owe, these committees can, without consulting them, decide and do in their name whatever seems good to them with impunity.
This is very convenient for the committees, but it is no way favourable for the social, intellectual and moral development of the section, nor for the real development of the collective power of the International [Workers’] Association. Because in this way, in the end, all that effectively remains are the committees, which, through a kind of fiction common to all governments, give their own will and their own thought for those of their respective sections, while in reality the latter no longer have, in most of the issues debated, either will or thought. But the committees, representing only themselves and having behind them only ignorant and indifferent masses, are now capable of forming only a fictitious power, not a real one. This fictitious power, a detestable and inevitable consequence of authoritarianism once introduced in the organisation of the International’s sections, is extremely favourable to the development of all kinds of intrigues, vanities, ambitions and vested interests; it is even excellent at inspiring a puerile self-satisfaction and a [sense of] security as ridiculous as it is fatal to the proletariat; excellent also at frightening the imagination of the bourgeoisie. But it will serve no purpose in the life-or-death struggle that the proletariat of all European countries must now wage against the still all-too-real power of the bourgeois world.
This indifference to general issues, increasingly evident amongst the building workers; this mental laziness that leads them to rely upon the decisions of their committees for all issues; and the resulting habit of automatic and blind subordination, mean that within the committees themselves, the majority of members end up becoming the unthinking instruments of the thoughts and wills of three, two, or sometimes even just one of their comrades, more intelligent, more energetic, more persevering, and more active than the others. As a result, most sections now only consist of masses governed at will either by oligarchies or even by purely individual dictatorships that mask their absolute power under the most democratic forms in the world.
In this situation, there was only one thing to do to seize control of the entire International Workers’ Association in Geneva and particularly the group of building workers: to win over, by any means possible, the few most influential leaders of the sections, twenty or thirty individuals at most. Once these were won over and duly subservient, all the building sections were in your hands. This is precisely the method used with great success by the skilful leaders of the Geneva Fabrica.
The apex of the organisation in Geneva proper is the Central Committee of Genva. Each section sends two delegates, so that it should gather at its meetings, now that the number of sections of the International in Geneva has risen to....[1], counting two delegates for each, .... members. It is very rare for the number of delegates actually present at the regular meetings of the Central Committee to reach a third [of that].
The Central Committee is unquestionably the supreme authority in the Geneva International. Thanks to the powers vested in it, and thanks to its direct relations with all the sections, of which it is supposed to be the immediate expression, the constitutional representation and in a way the permanent Parliament, the Central Committee is certainly more powerful in Geneva than the Federal Committee itself. The latter is the exclusive and supreme representative of the interests, of the aspirations, of the thoughts and the collective will of all the sections of French-speaking Switzerland, both with regard to the General Council of the International Workers’ Association and to the national organisations of this Association in all other countries. In this respect, it is subordinate, firstly, only to the General Council - against whose decisions, moreover, it can always appeal to the General Congresses - and secondly and even more immediately to the Federal Congresses of the sections of French-speaking Switzerland, which not only have the right to control it and impose their definitive resolutions on it, but also to dissolve it and replace it with another Federal Committee.
The Federal Committee also holds supreme control of the newspaper. While the editorial staff is indeed appointed by the Congress of French-speaking Switzerland, the Federal Committee exercises its ultimate oversight, and possesses the undeniable right to impose its own spirit upon it. Provided it knows how to wield this instrument effectively, it wields considerable power, for the newspaper, addressing itself directly to all members of the International, can significantly contribute to instilling within them the same collective direction.
These are the main prerogatives of the Federal Committee. To these must be added the very serious right and duty to take charge of the direction of strikes, as long as the latter, exceeding the limits of a locality, call for the active co-operation or even the material and moral assistance of all the sections of the French-speaking Federation, as well as the sections of other countries.
Apart from these rights, which are so considerable, it has no other rights than those of oversight, arbitration, regulation, and, if necessary, reminder of the fundamental and constitutive principles of the International [Workers’] Association, as formulated by the General Congresses, nor any other duty than that of regular intermediary between the General Council and local organisations. In places where there is a Central Committee, that is to say a local assembly of the sections, the Federal Committee does not have the right to address the latter directly; it can only do so through the Central Committee, which is the natural guardian of freedom and local autonomy against encroachments of power. The Federal Committee cannot therefore exert direct influence and immediate action upon the sections: this power is exclusively reserved for the Central Committee, to which it gives a local power far greater than that of the Federal Committee.
The power of the Central Committee, undoubtedly subordinate to the more formal than real oversight of the Federal Committee, and even more seriously to the criticism of the newspaper - if the Federal Committee even has the courage to use it against it as needed - has no other real limits, in the administration of the locality’s internal affairs, then those it may encounter in the autonomy of the sections and in the general assemblies, a kind of local Congress, not representative but truly popular, in the sense that all present members of the International are part of it, and which, in accordance with the statutes adopted by the first French-speaking Swiss Congress held in January 1869 in Geneva, have the right to overturn all the resolutions of the General Committee and even to impose their will upon it, subject to an appeal by the Central Committee to the Federal Committee and to the French-speaking Swiss Congress, an appeal which can only be made in cases where the resolutions taken by a general assembly would be contrary to the fundamental principles of the International [Workers’] Association.
The limits imposed by the autonomy of the sections on the arbitrary power of the Central Committee are very serious where the autonomy of the sections actually exists. Therefore, the Central Committee in Geneva has always respectively deferred to the rights of the sections of the Fabrica, whose solid organisation, as we have observed, is not only prior to the existence of the International [Workers’] Association, but even, in many respects, foreign to, if not entirely contrary to, the spirit and the most positive principles of that Association.
This was not the case for the building workers sections, whose organisation, very imperfect and often, as we have already seen, concentrated exclusively in their committees, did not command the same respect from the Central Committee. It was enough for the latter to share its opinion with the committee of the resistant section to break this resistance, of which, moreover, there has almost never been an example.
So there remained, for the defence of the independence and the rights of the building workers, only one means: general assemblies. Also, it must be said, nothing was more antipathetical to the Central Committee than these truly popular assemblies, which it always tried to replace with the assemblies of the committees of all the sections, that is to say, those of the governmental aristocracy.
We will return to this important point. Now, we must explain the interest that the Central Committee - which, ostensibly, represents not a clique, but all sections - could have in replacing the popular assemblies with these governmental assemblies. Is not the Central Committee itself a kind of popular Parliament elected by universal suffrage in all the sections? Yes, in theory, no in practice. Fictitiously, it represents everyone, but in reality, after a struggle lasting a few months, it ended up representing only Genevan domination.
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We will now therefore indicate, as briefly as possible, the main phases of this struggle, which will show us how the Central Committee, after having been a purely popular and democratic institution, gradually became a governmental, [purely] Genevan, and aristocratic institution.
In the International [Workers’] Association of Geneva, the number of building workers sections, together with that of intermediate sections (typographers, tailors, shoemakers, etc.) being greater than the number of sections of the Fabrica, and each section, whatever the number of its members, being represented on the Central Committee by only two delegates, it should have ensued that in this Committee the non-Genevan members would have been in the majority and the Genevans in the minority. It has not always been this way, for the simple reason that several intermediate sections, and even sections of the building workers, although mostly composed of foreigners, had from the beginning the habit of sending Genevan comrades as delegates to the Central Committee, who, obeying their patriotic inspirations, almost always vote with the Fabrica.
But, even though they constituted a numerical minority within the Central Committee, the delegates from Geneva proper had a dominant voice from the outset, and for many reasons. The first is that Geneva’s workers, taken as a whole, are much more educated, have much more political experience, and are infinitely more skilled in speaking than the building workers. The second is that the sections of the Fabrica have always delegated to the Central Committee their most intelligent and distinguished members, often even their principal leaders, in whom they had full confidence, and who, in accordance with the duty imposed by the statues on all delegates towards their respective sections, regularly came to report to their constituents on everything they had proposed and voted upon in the Central Committee and to ask them for instructions for their subsequent conduct, so that the Fabrica sections could and can say that they were truly represented in the Central Committee; whereas, most of the time, the representation of the building workers’ sections in the Central Committee is nothing but a pure fiction.
The strength of the building workers, as we have already said, lies not in the scientific or political development of their intelligence, but in the accuracy and depth of their instinct, as well as their natural common sense which almost always allows them to sense the right path, when they do not let themselves be led astray by the sophisms of some rhetorician and by the lies of some wicked schemers, which unfortunately happens to them too often. They have amongst them few educated men, accustomed to public speaking and experienced in organisation and administration. They reserve their most capable comrades for their section committees, and they often send the least capable and least zealous as delegates to the Central Committee. These delegates, understanding little or nothing of the importance of their mission, often miss the meetings of this committee, and are almost never in the habit of coming to their sections to report on the resolutions and votes, in which, even when they are present, they usually only take part in a mechanical and passive way.
It is understandable that facing such a majority, even when there is a majority, the purely Genevan minority must exert a considerable influence. Well, this influence, which was constantly growing, was restrained for a time by a single man, by comrade Brosset, a locksmith.
We do not need to say who Brosset is. Combining genuine kindness and great simplicity of manners with an energetic, ardent and proud character; intelligent, talented, and witty, and able to grasp through his intellect what he lacked the time or resources to understand and assimilate through science; passionately devoted to the cause of the proletariat, and fiercely protective of popular rights; as such, a relentless enemy of all authoritarian pretensions and tendencies, he was a true tribune of the people. Highly esteemed and loved by all building workers, he became, in a sense, their natural leader, and, as such, he alone or almost alone, both in the Central Committee and in the governmental assemblies of the committees, as well as in the popular assemblies, stood up to the Fabrica.
For several months, and particularly from the end of the great strike of April 1868 until his election as president of the Federal Committee of French-speaking Switzerland by the first French-speaking Congress in January 1869, he remained at the forefront. This as the heroic period of his activity within the International Workers’ Association. In the Central Committee as well as in the committee assemblies, he was truly alone in his fight, and, very often, despite the powerful Geneva coalition, supported by all the reactionary elements within these committees, he achieved victory. You can imagine how much he was hated by the leaders of the Fabrica.
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The main subject of the discussion was this: Will the International [Workers’] Association in Geneva organise itself according to the true and fully international principles of this institution, or, while keeping its great name of International, will it become an exclusively, narrowly Genevan institution? - a goal towards which the workers of Geneva themselves naturally tend with all their efforts, the masses no doubt without realising it themselves, but the leaders with full knowledge of the facts, knowing very well that, in this latter case, the International would not fail to soon become, in their hands, a very powerful means of triumphant intervention in the local politics of the canton of Geneva, for the benefit not of socialism but of the radical party.
That was the beginning, in the Geneva International, of the eternal debate between bourgeois radicalism and the revolutionary socialism of the proletariat; a debate which, being then only in its infancy, was naturally still shrouded in uncertainty, conducted by the two opposing parties under the influence of instinctive aspirations rather than with a reasoned knowledge of their goals, and which was only brought into full clarity later, in 1869, under the combined influence of the newspaper égalité and the propaganda of the Alliance section.
It is not to you, comrades, that we will need to explain how right those who defended the party of revolutionary socialism were, and how wrong were those who wanted to make the International an instrument of bourgeois radicalism, how wrong the latter were in doing so, unknowingly and unwillingly no doubt, working towards the total ruin of the spirit, the coherence and even the future of the International [Workers’] Association.
You are well aware that this same debate arose at the last General Congress of the Association, held in Basel in September 1869, and that, whatever our political opponents may say, the party of bourgeois radicalism, or rather that of the equivocal reconciliation of working-class socialism with the policies of the radical bourgeoise, was tacitly condemned by the majority of that Congress. It was in vain that the majority of the delegates from German-speaking Switzerland, joined with the two delegates from the Geneva Fabrica and united with almost all the German delegates, wanted this Congress to discuss the well-known question of the referendum or the direct legislation by the people. Relegated to the last item on the agenda, it was eliminated for lack of time, and because it was clear that the majority of the Congress was against it.
For you as for us, it is clear that that the revolutionary socialist portion of the proletariat cannot ally itself with any fraction, even the most advanced, of bourgeois politics without immediately becoming, against itself, the instrument of that politics; and that the programme of the Social Democratic Party in Germany, voted by the Congress of this party in August 1869 - a programme which, fortunately, the very force of circumstances imposes upon it the necessity of radically modifying today, and which, having declared that the conquest of political rights was the perquisite condition for the emancipation of the proletariat, thereby placed itself in flagrant contradiction with the fundamental principle of the International [Workers’] Association, by making bourgeois politics the basis of socialism (for any prerequisite politics, that is to say which precedes socialism and which is consequently made apart from it, which means against it, can only be exclusively bourgeois) - that this programme, we say, could only lead to putting the socialist movement of the proletariat in tow of bourgeois radicalism.
[...]
Because we have vigorously rejected any collusion or alliance with even the most radical bourgeois politics, it has been foolishly or slanderously claimed that, by considering only the economic or material aspects of the social question, we were indifferent to the great question of liberty, and that by this very fact we were placing ourselves in the ranks of reaction. [...]
These gentlemen are greatly mistaken - and, “knowingly or unknowingly”, they are trying to deceive the public - about us. We love freedom much more than they do; we love it to the point of wanting it complete and total; we want its reality and not its fiction; and it is for this very reason that we absolutely reject any bourgeois alliance, being convinced that any freedom won with the help of bourgeois politics, by the means and the weapons of the bourgeoisie, or by a duplicitous alliance with it, may be very real and very profitable for the bourgeois gentlemen, but for the people will never by anything but a fiction.
Gentlemen of the bourgeoisie, from all parties and even the most progressive, however cosmopolitan they may be, when it comes to making money through the ever-expanding exploitation of the people’s labour, in politics they are all fervent and fanatical patriots of the State, patriotism being in reality, as the illustrious assassin of the Parisian proletariat and current saviour of France, M. Thiers, has just so aptly stated, nothing but the passion and the cult of the national State. But whoever says State says domination, and whoever says domination says exploitation, which proves that this term People’s State (Volksstaat), which has unfortunately become and still remains today the slogan of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, is a ridiculous contradiction, a fiction, a lie, undoubtedly unconscious on the part of those who advocate it, and for the proletariat a very dangerous trap. The State, however popular it may appear in its forms, will always be an institution of domination and exploitation, and consequently a permanent source of slavery and misery for the masses. Therefore, there is no other way to emancipate peoples economically and politically, to give them both well-being and freedom, than to abolish the State, all States, and thereby kill, once and for all, what has hitherto been called politics; politics being precisely nothing other than the functioning, the manifestation both internal and external, of the action of the State, that is to say, the practice, the art and the science of dominating and exploiting the masses for the benefit of the privileged classes.
It is therefore not true to say that we disregard politics. We do not disregard it, since we positively want to destroy it. And this is the essential point on which we absolutely separate ourselves from the radical bourgeois politicians and socialists. Their politics consist in the use, reform and the transformation of politics and the State; whereas our politics, the only one we admit, is the total abolition of the State, and of politics which is its necessary manifestation.
And it is only because we sincerely want this abolition that we believe that we have the right to call ourselves internationalists and revolutionary socialists; for whoever wants to conduct politics differently than we do, whoever does not want the abolition of politics with us, will necessarily will have to do the politics of the State, patriotic and bourgeois, that is to say, deny in fact, in the name of his great or small national State, the human solidarity of the peoples outwith it, as well as the economic and social emancipation of the masses within it.
[...]
All these questions were discussed, with the secrecy befitting governmental deliberations, within the Central Committee in Geneva, and the common people, the mass of the International [Workers’] Association, were never more than very imperfectly informed of the struggles that took place in this Upper House of senators. Yet they were repeated, undoubtedly not in the full, unvarnished form, but incidentally and more or less disguised, both in the general assemblies and in the monthly meetings of the Central Section. In both cases, the ardent defender of the true principles of the International, of the independence and dignity of the building workers and of the sovereign rights of the “popular rabble” obviously threatened by the growing ambition and the encroachments of the power of the senators of the committees, Comrade Brosset was powerfully supported by Comrades Serno-Soloviévitch, Perron, Ph. Becker, Guétat, Monchal, Lindegger, and several others, amongst whom we must not forget M. Henri Perret, the perpetual secretary of the Geneva International, who, with the tact proper to Statesmen, in all public discussions, whatever his private opinions may be, always manages to appear to share the opinion of the majority.
In the great public assemblies, it was naturally the broadest ideas, the most generous opinions, that always prevailed. Most of the time, when the minds of the masses have not been distorted for a long time by a self-serving and skilful propagation of slanders and lies, a kind of collective instinct arises in popular gatherings which irresistibly pushes them towards what is just, toward what is true, and which is so powerful that even the most recalcitrant individuals are swept along by it. The schemers, the cunning, all-powerful in the more or less secretive meetings of the committees, usually lose much of their confidence before these large assemblies where common sense, supported by this instinct, exposes their sophisms. There generally manifests such a contagion of justice and truth that it has very often happened that in the general assemblies of all the sections, even a large number of Fabrica workers - the common people of the Genevan sections themselves - carried away by the common enthusiasm, voted for resolutions contrary to the ideas and measures proposed by their leaders.
Moreover, as we have already noted, these general assemblies were never favoured by the latter, who always preferred the assemblies of the committees of all the sections. These governmental and hidden assemblies, almost always held behind closed doors, are inaccessible to the membership of the International. Only the members, more or less permanent and unchanging, of the committees of the sections have the right to take part. Gathered in a private and closed assembly, they together constitute the true governmental aristocracy of the Association. It is a truth often observed it is enough for a man, even the most liberal and widely popular, to be part of any government for him to change his nature; unless he is frequently immersed back into the popular element, unless he is bound by permanent transparency and publicity, unless he is subjected to the beneficial, continuous regime of popular control and criticism which must always remind him that he is not the master, nor even the guardian of the masses, but only their agent or their elected and at any moment revocable official, he inevitably risks corrupting himself through exclusive dealings with aristocrats like himself, and of becoming a pretentious and vain fool, all puffed up with the feeling of his ridiculous importance.
This was the fate of the members of the Geneva committees of the International had condemned themselves by refusing the membership access to their meetings. The spirit that presided over these meetings was necessarily opposed to that which reigned in the popular assemblies: as generous and broad as the latter were, the former had to be narrow. It could no longer be the instinct for great ideas and great thoughts [that prevailed]; it was necessarily that of a false wisdom, of miserable calculations and shabby slyness. In short, it was an authoritarian and governmental spirit: not that of the principal representatives of the great mass of the International, but that of the leaders of the Geneva Fabrica.
It is understandable that these Gentlemen are very fond of these committee meetings. They provide fertile ground for the full display of their Genevan skills; they reign supreme there, and they have made ample use of them to indoctrinate, to discipline according to their own views and, if we may put it this way, to “Genevise” all the principal members of the foreigner section committees, gradually instilling in their minds and hearts the governmental and bourgeois instincts that have always driven them. Indeed, these assemblies of the section committees offered them the advantage of being able to personally know the most prominent and influential members of these sections, and it was enough for them to convert these members to their policies to become the absolute master of all the sections.
We have also seen that before January 1869, when the new statutes adopted by the first Congress of French-speaking Switzerland came into effect, it was not the general assemblies, but the assemblies of the committees that were considered by the party of Genevan reaction as the supreme legal authority of the Geneva International. Moreover, the general assemblies were neither regular nor frequent. They were only convened for extraordinary cases, and then their agenda, determined in advance, was always so full that very little time remained for the discussion of questions of principle.
But there was another terrain on which these questions could be debated with much more freedom: it was the monthly and sometimes even extraordinary meetings of the Central Section.
The Central Section, as we have said, was the seed, the first established body of the International Workers’ Association in Geneva; it should have remained its soul, its inspiration, and its permanent propagandist. It is in this sense, no doubt, that it has often been called the “Section of Initiative”. It had created the International in Geneva; it was to preserve and develop its spirit. Since all the other sections are trade sections, the workers are brought together and organised not by the idea, but by fact and by the very necessities of their identical work. This economic fact, that of specialised industry and the particular conditions of its exploitation by capital, the close and very specific solidarity of interests, needs, sufferings and aspirations that exist amongst all the workers who are part of the same trade section, forms the real basis of their association. The idea comes later, as the explanation or as the equivalent expression of the development and the conscious, reflective awareness of this fact.
A worker needs no great intellectual preparation to become a member of the trade section that represents his profession. He is already a member before he even knows it, quite naturally. What he needs to know is, first of all, that he toils and exhausts himself working, and that this work which kills him, barely enough to feed his family and to poorly replenish his drained strength, enriches his boss, and that consequently the latter is his ruthless exploiter, his tireless oppressor, his enemy, his master, to who he owes nothing but the hatred and revolt of the slave, except to grant him later, once he has defeated him, the justice and fraternity of the free man.
He must also know, something which is not difficult to understand, that alone he is powerless against his master, and that, in order not to be crushed by him, he must first of all associate with his workshop comrades, remaining loyal to them in all the struggles which arise in the workshop against this master.
He must also understand that the union of the workers in the same workshop is not enough; that all workers of the same trade, working in the same locality, must be united. Once he understand this - and, unless he is exceptionally foolish, daily experience should soon teach him this - he consciously becomes a devoted member of his trade section. The latter is already constituted as a fact, but it does not yet have international consciousness; it is still merely a local fact. The same experience, this time collective, soon shatters the narrow confines of this exclusively local solidarity in the mind of even the least intelligent worker. A crisis arises, a strike. Workers of the same trade, in a particular place, unite and demand from their employers either a wage increase or a reduction in working hours. The bosses refuse to grant these demands; and since they cannot do without workers, they bring them in either from other towns or provinces of the same country, or even from foreign countries. But in these countries, workers toil harder for less pay; the bosses can therefore sell their products more cheaply, and by doing so, competing with the products of the country where workers earn more with less effort, they force the bosses of that country to reduce wages and increase the workload of their workers; hence, in the long run, the relatively bearable situation of workers in one country can only be maintained if it is equally bearable in all other countries. All these phenomena are repeated too often for them to escape the observation of even the simplest workers. They eventually understand that to protect themselves against the exploitative and ever-increasing oppression of the bosses, it is not enough to organise local solidarity; they must bring into this solidarity all workers of the same trade, not only those working in the same province or country, but in all countries, and especially those more closely linked by trade and industry. Then is formed organisation that is neither local nor even merely national, but truly international for the same trade.
But this is not yet the organisation of workers in general, it is still only the international organisation of a single trade. For the uneducated worker to recognise the real solidarity that necessarily exists between all these trades, in every country of the world, other workers, whose understanding is more developed and who possess some notions of economic science, must came to his aid. Not that he lacks daily experience on this point, but because the economic phenomena through which this undeniable solidarity manifests itself are infinitely more complicated, so that their true meaning can escape and indeed often does escape less educated workers.
Assuming that international solidarity is perfectly established in one trade and not in others, it will necessarily follow that in that industry the wages of workers will be higher and the working hours will be shorter than in all other industries. And since it has been proven that, as a consequence of the competition that capitalists and bosses have amongst themselves, the real profit of both has no other source than the relative meagreness of wages and the greatest possible number of working hours, it is clear that, in the industry in which the workers are internationally united, the capitalists and bosses will earn less than in all the others; as a result, little by little, capitalists will move their capital and bosses their credit and exploitative activity to industries that are less organised or not organised at all. But this will necessarily lead to a decrease in demand for workers in internationally organised industry, and this will naturally worsen the situation of these workers, who will be forced, in order not to starve, to work more and be content with lower wages. Hence it follows that working conditions can neither worsen nor improve in any industry without workers in all other industries soon feeling the effects, and that all trades in all countries of the world are truly and indissolubly linked.
This interdependence is demonstrated by science as much as by experience, science being, moreover, nothing but universal experience highlighted, compared, systematised, and duly explained. But it also manifests in the workers’ world by the mutual, profound, and passionate sympathy which grows and intensifies in the heart of the entire proletariat as economic realities develop and their political and social consequences, even more bitter for workers of all trades, are felt more and more. The workers of every trade and every country, informed, on the one hand, by the material and moral support they find in times of struggle from workers of all other trades and all other countries, and, on the other hand, by the disapproval and systematic and hateful opposition they encounter not only from their own bosses, but also from the bosses of industries far distant from their own, from the bourgeoise as a whole, come to a full understanding of their situation and the fundamental conditions for their liberation. They see that the social world is truly divided into three main categories: 1) the countless millions of exploited proletariats; 2) a few hundred thousand exploiters of the second and even third order; and 3) a few thousand, or at most a few tens of thousands, of larger predators or well-fed capitalists who, by directly exploiting the second category and indirectly, through it, the first, put into their huge pockets at least half of the profits from the collective labour of all humanity.
From the moment when a worker becomes aware of this particular and constant fact, however developed his intelligence may be, he cannot fail to soon understand that, if there is a means of salvation for him, this means can only be the establishment and organisation of the closest practical solidarity between the proletarians of the whole world, without distinction of industries and countries, in the struggle against the exploiting bourgeoisie.
Here then is the ready-made basis of the great International Workers’ Association. It was given to us not by a theory from the head of one or a few profound thinkers, but rather by the real development of economic facts, by the very hard trials these facts impose upon the working masses, and by the reflections and thoughts that they naturally bring forth within them. For the Association to have been founded, all the necessary elements that constitute it - economic facts, experiences, aspirations and thoughts of the proletariat - had to have already developed to a degree intense enough to form a solid foundation. Within the proletariat itself, scattered throughout all countries, there had to be groups or associations of workers advanced enough to take the initiative in this great movement for the liberation of the proletariat. After this undoubtedly comes the personal initiative of a few intelligent individuals devoted to the people’s cause.
[...]
The Central Sections do not represent any specific industry, since the most advanced workers from every conceivable industry are gathered there. What, then, do they represent? The very idea of the International. What is their mission? The development and propagation of this idea. And what is this idea? It is the emancipation not only of the workers of this industry or that country, but of all possible industries and of all countries of the world; it is the general emancipation of all those in the world who, eking out their miserable daily existence by some kind of productive work, are economically exploited and politically oppressed by capital, or rather by the owners and privileged intermediaries of capital. Such is the negative, belligerent or revolutionary strength of the idea. And the positive strength? It is the foundation of a new social world, based solely on emancipated labour, and creating itself, upon the ruins of the old world, through the organisation and free federation of workers’ associations, freed from the yoke, both economic and political, of the privileged classes.
These two sides of the same question, one negative and the other positive are inseparable. No one can want to destroy without having at least a remote conception, true or false, of the order of things which, according to him, should succeed the one which presently exists; and the more vivid this conception is in him, the more powerful his destructive force becomes; and the closer it comes to the truth, that is, the more it confirms to the necessary development of the actual social world, the more the effects of its destructive action become beneficial and useful. For destructive action is always determined, not only in its essence and the degree of its intensity, but also in its methods, in its ways, and the means it employs, by the positive ideal that constitutes its primary inspiration, its soul.
What is exceedingly remarkable, and what has been observed and noted many times by a great number of writers of very diverse tendencies, is that today only the proletariat possesses a positive idea towards which it strives with all the passion, still almost untouched, of its being; it sees before it a star, a sun which illuminates it, which already warms it, at least in its imagination, in its faith, and which shows it with certain clarity the path it must follow, while at the same time all the privileged and so-called enlightened classes find themselves plunged into a dismal, frightening darkness. They see nothing before them, believe in and aspire to nothing, and want nothing but the eternal preservation of the status quo, all the whole acknowledging that the status quo is worthless. Nothing proves better that these classes are doomed to die and that the future belongs to the proletariat. It is the “barbarians” (the proletarians) who today represent faith in human destiny and the future of civilisation, while the “civilised” find their salvation only in barbarism: the massacre of the Communards and a return to the Pope. These are the last two words of privileged civilisation.
The central sections are the active and vibrant centres where the new faith is maintained, developed and explained. No one enters them as a particular worker of this or that trade, with a view to the particular organisation of that trade; all enter only as workers in general, with a view to the general emancipation and organisation of labour and the new social world founded upon labour, in all countries. The workers who are part of it, leaving their status as particular or “real” workers at the threshold, in the sense of specialisation, present themselves there as workers “in general”. Workers of what? Workers of the idea, of propaganda and of the organisation of the economic and militant power of the International: workers of the Social Revolution.
We see that the central sections exhibit a completely different character from that of the trade sections, and are even diametrically opposed. While the latter, following the path of natural development, begin with the fact to arrive at the idea, the central sections, following on the contrary that of ideal or abstract development, begin with the idea to arrive at the fact. It is evident that, in contrast to the thoroughly realistic or positive method of the trade sections, the method of the central sections appears artificial and abstract. This way of proceeding from idea to fact is precisely the one eternally employed by idealists of all schools, theologians and metaphysicians, and whose ultimate impotence lies in the absolute impossibility, starting from the abstract idea, of arriving at the real and concrete fact.
If there had only been central sections in the International Workers’ Association, there is no doubt that it would not have attained even a hundredth of the considerable power of which it now boasts. The central sections would have been nothing more than workers’ academies where all social questions, including of course that of the organisation of labour, would have been eternally debated, but without the slightest serious attempt or even any possibility of realisation; and this is for the very simple reason that labour “in general” is merely an abstract ideas that finds its “reality” only in an immense diversity of specialised industries, each with its own nature and specific conditions, which cannot be guessed, much less determined, by abstract thought, but which, manifesting themselves only through their actual development, can alone determine their particular balance, their relationships, and their place in the general organisation of labour - an organisation which, like all general things, must be the result constantly produced anew by the living and real combination of all particular industries, and not their abstract principle, violently and doctrinally imposed, as the German communists, partisans of the People’s State, would have it.
If there had been only central sections in the International, they would probably still have succeeded in forming popular conspiracies to overthrow the current order of things - conspiracies of intention, but too powerless to achieve their goal, because they could never have drawn in and received into their ranks more than a very small number of workers, the most intelligent, the most energetic, the most convinced, and the most devoted. The vast majority, the millions of proletarians, would have remained outside, and, in order to overthrow and destroy the political and social order that crushes us today, the support of these millions is necessary.
Only individuals, and only a very small number of individuals, allow themselves to be guided by the abstract and pure “idea”. The millions, the masses, not only in the proletariat, but also in the enlightened and privileged classes, are never swayed except by the power and logic of “facts”, most of the time understanding and considering only their immediate interests or their passions of the moment, always more or less blindly. Therefore, in order to interest and draw the entire proletariat into the work of the international, it was necessary and it still is necessary to approach them not with general and abstract ideas, but with a real and living understanding of their real ills; and their daily ills, although presenting a general character to the thinker, and although being in reality particular effects of general and enduring causes, are infinitely diverse, take on a multitude of different aspects, produced by a multitude of passing and partial causes. Such is the daily reality of these evils. But the mass of the proletariat, which is forced to live from day to day, and which hardly finds a moment of leisure to think about tomorrow, grasps the evils from which it suffers, and of which it is eternally the victim, precisely and exclusively in this reality, and never or almost never in their generality.
Therefore, to touch the heart and win the trust, approval, support, cooperation of the uneducated proletariat - and unfortunately, the vast majority of the proletariat still falls into this category - we must begin by speaking to him not about the general ills of the entire international proletariat, nor about the general causes that give rise to them, but about his particular, daily, entirely personal ills. We need to talk to him about his own job and the conditions of his work specifically in the locality where he lives; about the hardship and excessive extent of his daily work, the inadequacy of his wages, the wickedness of his boss, the high cost of food and the impossibility for him to feed and raise his family properly.
And in offering him ways to combat his ills and to improve his position, we must not initially speak to him of those general and revolutionary means which now constitute the programme of the International Workers’ Association, such as the abolition of hereditary individual property and the establishment of collective property; the abolition of juridical right and of the State, and their replacement by the organisation and free federation of productive associations; he would probably understand nothing of all these means, and it was even possible that, under the influence of the religious, political and social ideas that governments and priests had tried to instil in him, he would reject with distrust and anger the imprudent propagandist who tried to convert him with such arguments. No, he should only be initially offered means whose usefulness his natural common sense and daily experience could neither fail to recognise nor reject. These initial means are, as we have already said, the establishment of a complete solidarity of defence and resistance, with all his workshop comrades, against their common boss or master; and, then, the extension of this solidarity to all the workers against all the bosses of the same trade, in the same locality, that is to say his formal entry as a full and active member in the section of his trade, a section affiliated with the International Workers’ Association.
After joining the section, the new worker learns a great many things. It is explained that the same solidarity which exists between all members of the same section is also established between all the different sections or between all the trades of the same locality; that the organisation of this broader solidarity, which embraces equally the workers of all trades, has become necessary because the bosses of all trades agree amongst themselves to reduce all men forced to earn their living through work to increasingly miserable conditions. It is then explained that this double solidarity of workers of the same trade initially, then of workers of all trades or of all trades organised into different sections, is not limited to the locality, but, extending far beyond all borders, encompasses the whole world of workers, the proletariat of all countries, powerfully organised for defence, for the war against the bourgeoisie’s exploitation.
From the moment he became a member of a section of the International, better than through the verbal explanations he received from his comrades, he soon recognised all these things through his personal experience, now inseparable from and united with that of all the other members of the section. His trade, driven to the brink by the greed and harshness of the bosses, goes on strike. But every strike, for workers who live solely on their wages, is an excruciatingly painful ordeal. They earn nothing, yet their families, they children, and their own stomachs continue to demand their daily bread, and they have nothing in reserve. The strike fund they have painstakingly managed to raise is insufficient to support everyone for days, and sometimes even weeks. They would starve to death or be forced to submit to the harshest conditions imposed upon them by the greed and insolence of their bosses, if they did not receive outside help. But who will provide this aid? Certainly not the bourgeoisie, who are all in league against the workers; it can only be the workers of other trades and other countries. And indeed, this aid arrives, brought or sent by other sections of the International, both locally and from foreign countries. Such an experience, repeated many times, demonstrates, better than any words, the beneficent power of international solidarity within the world of labour.
The worker who joins a section to share in the benefits of this solidarity is not asked about his political or religious principles. He is asked only one thing: Does he want to accept, along with the benefits of the association, all its consequences, sometimes painful, and all its duties? Does he still want to remain loyal to the section through all the twists and turns of this struggle, initially purely economic, and henceforth align all his actions with the resolutions of the majority, insofar as these resolutions have a direct or indirect connection to this same struggle against the bosses? In short, the only solidarity offered to him as a benefit and imposed upon him at the same time as a duty is, in the broadest sense of the word, economic solidarity. But once this solidarity is seriously accepted and well established, it produces everything else - all the most sublime and subversive principles of the International, the most destructive to religion, to judicial law and to the State, to authority both divine and human, the most revolutionary in a word, from a socialist point of view, being nothing but the natural, necessary developments of this economic solidarity. And the immense practical advantage of the trade sections over the central sections consists precisely in this, that these developments, these principles are demonstrated to the workers not by theoretical reasoning, but by the living and tragic experience of a struggle which becomes every day wider, deeper, more terrible: so that the least educated, least prepared, most gentle worker, drawn ever further by the very consequences of this struggle, ends up recognising himself as a revolutionary, an anarchist and an atheist, without often himself knowing how he became so.
It is clear that only the trade sections can give this practical education to their members, and that only they can consequently draw the mass of the proletariat into the organisation of the International, this mass, we have said, without whose powerful support the triumph of the social revolution will never be possible.
If there had only been central section in the International, it would have been nothing but souls without bodies, magnificent dreams but without any possibility of realisation.
Fortunately, the central sections, offshoots of the main centre that had been formed in London, had been founded not by bourgeois, not by professional scholars, nor by politicians, but by socialist workers. Workers, and this is their immense advantage over the bourgeoisie, thanks for their economic situation, and also because they have thus far been spared the doctrinaire, classical, idealist and metaphysical education that poisons bourgeoise youth, possess an eminently practical and positive mindset. They are not satisfied with ideas; they need facts, and they only believe in ideas insofar as they are supported by facts. This fortunate disposition enabled them to avoid the two pitfalls against which all revolutionary attempts by the bourgeoisie fail: the academy, and the Platonic conspiracy. Moreover, the programme of the International Workers’ Association, drafted in London and definitely accepted by the Congress of Geneva (1866), by proclaiming that the economic emancipation of the working classes is the great goal to which every political movement must be subordinated as a mere means, and that all efforts made thus far have failed for lack of solidarity between the workers of the various professions in each country and of a fraternal union between workers of the various countries, clearly indicated to them the only path they could, that they should, follow.
Above all, they had to address the masses in the name of their economic emancipation, not political revolution; in the name of their material interests first, to arrive later at their moral interests, the latter, as collective interests, always being only the expression and logical consequence of the former. They could not wait for the masses to come to them; they had to go and find them where they were, in their daily reality, and that reality was daily work, specialised and divided into trades, already organised to varying degrees by the necessities of collective work in each particular industry, to make them adhere to the economic goal, to the common action of the great Association of workers of all countries, to affiliate them, in short, to [the general organisation of] the International, while leaving them their autonomy and their particular organisation. Which is to say that the first thing they had to do, and did indeed do, was to organise, around each central section, as many trade sections as there were different industries.
It was in this way that the central sections, which in each country represented the soul or spirit of the International, took shape and became real and powerful organisations. Many believe that once this mission was accomplished, the central sections should dissolve, leaving only the trade sections. In our view, this is a grave error. For if the central sections alone, unsupported by...[2]
[1] Bakunin left the number blank and added in the margin: “The Genevan friends should put in the current figures, which I do not know. In any cases there are more than thirty sections, and consequently more than sixty delegates to the Central Committee.” (Translator)
[2] The next page is missing presumably lost at the printers when the section published as “The Organisation of the International” was typeset for inclusion in L’Almanach du Peuple. (Translator)