Michael Bakunin
12-13 June 1872
Brothers,
I am an old and close friend, I might say the brother of Christophe, the friend and brother whom many amongst you certainly have not forgotten. With him, I was one of the first founders of the A[lliance]. And it is by this double capacity that I address myself to you, Brothers of the A[lliance].
Unfortunate dissensions arising from the struggles of pride [amour-propre] between brothers who seem to have sacrificed our great purpose, the triumph of the universal and social revolution, to that of their vanities and personal ambitions, have had as final result the dissolution of the Madrid A[lliance].
I do not set myself up as the judge of anyone, but in the name of our principles as well as on behalf of all our brothers, I must say that those who have contributed to this dissolution, those who have divulged the secret of the A[lliance], a secret that we have all promised on our honour to keep, are indeed guilty....
Betraying the A[lliance] is betraying the revolution, for the A[lliance] has no other purpose than to serve the revolution. We do not form a theoretical or exclusively economic institution. The A[lliance] is neither an academy nor a workshop; it is an essentially militant association, having for an objective the organisation of the power of the popular masses with a view to the destruction of all the States and all currently existing religious, political, legal, economic and social institutions, with a view to the absolute emancipation of the enslaved and exploited workers of the entire world. The goal of our organisation is to push the masses to wipe the slate clean, so that the agricultural and industrial populations can reorganise and federalise themselves, according to the of principles justice, equality, freedom and solidarity, from the bottom up, spontaneously, freely, outside of all official tutelage, whether reactionary or even so-called revolutionary.
To those who ask us what good the existence of the Alliance is when the International exists, we will answer: the International is certainly a magnificent institution; it is unquestionably the finest, the most useful, the most beneficial creation of the present century. It has created the basis for the solidarity of the workers of the entire world. It has given them a beginning of organisation across the borders of all the States and outside of the world of the exploiters and the privileged. It has done more, it already contains today the first seeds of the organisation of the unity to come, and at the same time it has given to the proletariat of the entire world the sense of its own power. Certainly these are immense services that it has rendered to the great cause of the universal and social revolution. But it is not an institution sufficient to organise and led this revolution.
All the serious revolutionaries who have taken an active part in the work of the International in any country whatsoever, since 1864, the year of its foundation, must have become convinced of this. The International prepares the elements of revolutionary organisation, but it does not accomplish it. It prepares them by organising the public and legal struggle of the workers joined in solidarity from all countries against the exploiters of labour, capitalists, proprietors and industrial entrepreneurs, but it never goes beyond that. The only thing that it does apart from this ever very useful work is the theoretical propaganda of socialist ideas amongst the working masses, a work also very useful, very necessary for the preparation of the revolution of the masses, but which is still far from the revolutionary organisation of the masses.
The International, in short, is, an immense milieu favourable and necessary for this organisation, but it is not yet that organisation. The International accepts within its ranks, completely disregarding all differences of political and religious beliefs, all honest workers, on the sole condition that they accept in all its consequences the solidarity of the struggle of the workers against bourgeois capital, the exploiter of labour. This is a positive condition, sufficient to separate the world of the workers from the world of the privileged, but insufficient to give the former a revolutionary direction. Its programme is so broad that the monarchists and Catholics themselves can join. And this breadth of programme is absolutely necessary, so that the International can embrace hundreds of thousands of workers, and it is only by relying upon hundreds of thousands of members that it becomes a true power. If the International had given itself a more explicit and determined programme in respect to political, religious and social questions, if it recognised an obligatory and so to speak an official doctrine, if for example it made the acceptance of the principles of atheism in religion, or of communalism is politics a condition for anyone to join, it would have numbered barely a few thousand members, and it would have excluded millions of workers from industry and the land, who by their entire position as well as by their instincts are revolutionaries, atheists, and socialists, but who have not yet lost the bad habit of reactionary thoughts. It would only have formed a rather mediocre party and which would barely have counted a few thousand members in all of Europe. And that party itself would necessarily have split into many different cliques. For from the moment that there is an official theory, there will inevitably be different and contrary theories. There would be bourgeois socialists, peaceful socialists, cooperativists, authoritarian socialists, hoping for their emancipation from the reform of the State, and revolutionary socialists expecting it only from the destruction of the State.
All these theories, with many other shades, already exist today in the International; but as long as none of them is proclaimed as the official theory, these differences of doctrine and the peaceful struggles that ensue within the midst of the International, far from being an evil, are in my opinion a great good, in that they contribute to developing the thought and the spontaneous work of everyone’s intelligence; they cannot harm solidarity, which must unite the workers of all countries, because that solidarity is not theoretical in nature, it is entirely practical. - It is, I repeat again, the solidarity of the economic struggle of labour against capital, with all the practical consequences that it entails. The workers of the Jura Federation, for example, who abhor all authoritarian organisation and who have adopted for a programme the abolition of the State, are profoundly separated in this regard from the workers of Germany, who, by a large majority it seems, accept the authoritarian theories of Marx; and yet were a strike to break out in Germany, the workers of the Jura would be the first to support it with all their means. I am not certain, but I hope that the workers of Germany would do the same thing. This, then, is the true, the only solidarity created by the International. It is entirely practical, and it persists, it remains powerful despite all the theoretical disagreements that may arise between different groups of workers.
Yet it can only maintain itself on this sole condition that no theory, whether political, whether socialist, whether philosophical, can ever become the official, obligatory theory of the International. At first, every official theory is good sense. To have the courage and the pretext to impose itself, it must proclaim itself absolute, and the time of the absolute is over, at least in the camp of the revolution - for the men of freedom and humanity, the absolute is the absurd. Then, as there has never been an example in history and as it will be forever impossible that any given theory will really be the product of the individual thought of everyone; as all theories, as explicit and finite theories, have been and always will be elaborated by a small number of individuals, the so-called absolute theory will in reality never represent anything other than the despotism exercised by the thought of a few on the thought of all - a theoretical despotism that will never fail to turn into practical despotism and exploitation.
This is precisely what we see happening today within the midst of the International. The Marxian clique, all-powerful in the General Council, taking advantage of the momentary disarray of the revolutionary socialists of France, who had stood up to it until now, but who today murdered, decimated, deported, exiled, or forced into silence, cannot make their voices heard, obviously tends to impose the political and socialist doctrine of Marx, that of the emancipation of the working classes by the power of the great centralised State, as the official doctrine of the International. Alongside this goal and as its necessary consequence, it has pursued another; that of transforming the General Council, always directed by Marx in person, as the government, the official director, as the dictator of the International. - And it works, it schemes immensely today, spreading slanders liberally, to prepare a Congress that, after having proclaimed Marx’s doctrine and naturally concealed dictatorship as obligatory for all the sections of the International, will declare heretical all those who do not want to accept this doctrine, and traitors all those who do not want to bow their heads under this dictatorship.
Such is the inevitable effect of official doctrines.
Unless it betrays its mission, the International must not accept any. But then what will happen? This will happen, more and more enlightened by the struggle and by the free propaganda of different ideas, guided by their own instinct and raised more and more to revolutionary consciousness by the very practice and the inevitable consequences of the universal solidarity of the struggle of labour against capital, the masses [will elaborate], slowly it is true, but in an unerring manner, their own thoughts, theories that will emerge from bottom up, but which will no longer be imposed from top down.
I have said that this work is being done and is done slowly. Not so slowly, however, as you might think. Those who have had some experience in the development of the International know what marvellous progress the consciousness of the workers has made in a very small number of years, thanks to the absolute freedom that has reigned so far within the International, freedom in propaganda, as well as in organisation...
In my opinion, this progress is immense. However, I recognise that it is insufficient to give the elementary power of the masses a revolutionary organisation; and as long as the masses do not have this organisation, even were they more overwhelming in terms of numbers [within the International] in comparison to the privileged classes, they would always be crushed by the latter.
I gladly recognise that the privileged classes in all countries have lost much of their former strength. They have utterly lost their moral strength; they no longer have faith in their right, they know that they are iniquitous, odious, they despise themselves. That is significant. Having lost their moral strength, they also conspicuously and necessarily lose their intellectual strength. They are much more learned than the proletariat, but that does not prevent them from becoming increasingly stupid. They have lost all intellectual and moral courage. They no longer dare to look forward and only look back. All of this unfailingly condemns them to death. The proletariat, who in their lifetime have inherited their former intellectual and moral power, is prepared to force them today into their last political and economic entrenchments.
All of this is true. But we must be under no illusions; the entrenchments are still very strong: they are called the State, the Church, the Stock Market, the police, the army, then that great international and public conspiracy, legal, admitted, that is called diplomacy.
All that is skilfully organised and powerful by organisation. And in the presence of this formidable organisation, the proletariat, even united, grouped and unified in and by the International, remains disorganised. Whatever its number! Even if the people were a million, several millions, they will be held in check by a few tens of thousands of soldiers, maintained and disciplined at their expense, against them, by bourgeois coins produced by their own labour.
Take the most numerous, most advanced and best organised section of the International. - Is it prepared for the fight? You know well that it is not. Out of a thousand workers, it is a great deal if you can gather one or at most two hundred on the day of the battle. The thing is to organise a force, it is not enough to unite interests, feelings, thoughts... We must unite wills and characters. Our enemies organise their forces by the power of money and the authority of the State. We can only organise ours by conviction, passion.
We cannot have and we want no other army than the people, the masses. But how can this entire mass - and it is only under this condition that it can prevail - rise up simultaneously? Above all, how to ensure that the masses, even electrified, risen, do not contradict and paralyse themselves by their conflicting movements?
There is only one single means; it is to secure the cooperation of all the popular leaders. I call popular leaders individuals who for the most part come from the people, living with them, sharing their life, and who, thanks to their intellectual and moral superiority, exert a great influence upon them. There are many amongst them who abuse this and make it serve their personal interests. These are very dangerous men and who must be avoided like the plague, that we must fight and destroy whenever possible. We must seek good leaders, those who seek their own interest only in the interest of all. But how to find them and recognise them, and what individual is intelligent enough, perceptive enough, and powerful enough, not to make a mistake in their initial choice and then to convince and to organise them all by himself?
It is obvious that this cannot be the work of one man alone; that many men combined can alone undertake and successfully complete such a difficult endeavour. But for that, it is first necessary that they come to an agreement amongst themselves and that they join hands for this common work. But since this work has a practical, revolutionary purpose, the mutual understanding that is its necessary condition cannot be made in public; if it were made in public, it would attract the persecutions of the whole official and unofficial world against the initiators and they would see themselves crushed before they could do the slightest thing.
So this agreement and this association that must emerge from it can only be made in secret, that is to say it is necessary to establish a conspiracy, a secret society proper.
Such is also the thought and aim of the Alliance. It is a secret society formed in the midst of the International, to give to the latter a revolutionary organisation, to transform it, and all the popular masses that are outside of it, into a power sufficiently organised to destroy the politico-clerical-bourgeois reaction, to destroy all the economic, legal, religious and political institutions of the States.
The last Conference of London has pronounced anathema against any secret society that might be formed within the International. It is obviously a blow against us. But what the Marxian clique which directed that Conference, as it directs the General Council at this time, what it was carefully avoided from saying to the majority of the members of that Conference, and what it has only said to its closest friends or to its cronies, is that it pushed to issue this condemnation against us to clear the way for its own conspiracy, for the secret society that has existed since 1848 under the direction of Marx, founded by Marx, Engels, and the late Wolff, and which is nothing other than the almost exclusively Germanic society of the authoritarian Communists.
What I have said here is not a supposition, but a fact known by many people, and which has often, in different political trials, publicly emerged in Germany. So, leaving aside the odious part of personalities that has been pushed to the most ignominious fifth, by our vindictive and all too persistent adversaries, it must be recognised that the internal struggle that today erupts within the International, is nothing other than that of two secret societies as opposed by their principles, as by the system of their organisation, and of which one, that of the authoritarian Communists, as I have just said, [has existed] since 1848, the other that of the Alliance of Revolutionary Socialists dates its existence from 1864, it is true, but has only began to establish itself in the International since 1868.
Let us first begin by doing justice to our adversaries, where they deserve that justice. Marx is not an ordinary man. He is a superior intelligence, a man of very extensive knowledge, especially in economic issues, and moreover a man who, to my knowledge since 1845, the time of my first encounter with him in Paris, has always been sincerely, entirely devoted to the cause of the emancipation of the proletariat, a cause to which he has rendered undeniable services, which he has never knowingly betrayed, but which he is greatly jeopardising today by his formidable vanity, by his hateful, malicious character, and by his tendencies to dictatorship within the party of the revolutionary socialists itself. His vanity in fact has no limits, a true Jewish vanity; and it is a great pity, it is a useless luxury, for vanity is understandable in an empty being, who, being nothing, wants to appear all. Marx has very positive qualities and a very great power of thought and action, that could have spared him, it seems to me, the trouble of resorting to the miserable means of vanity. This vanity, naturally already very strong, has been considerably swollen by the adulation of his friends and disciples. Very self-centred, very jealous, very touchy, and very vindictive, like Jehovah, the God of his people, Marx would not suffer that anyone recognise any God but himself; what am I saying, that anyone merely do justice to another socialist writer or activist, in his presence. Proudhon who was never a God, but who certainly was a great revolutionary thinker and who rendered immense services to the development of socialist ideas, became for that same reason the bête noire of Marx. To praise Proudhon in his presence, was to commit a mortal offence, worthy of all the natural consequences of his enmity - and these consequences are: first hatred, then the filthiest slanders. Marx never shied away from lying, however odious, however false, when he believed he could use it without too great danger for himself against those who had the misfortune of incurring his wrath. - I have said that Marx is excessively self-centred. Here is one proof: he still believes in individual ownership of ideas. After the death of Lassalle, the famous agitator and founder of the Social Democratic Party in Germany, in large part a disciple of Marx, an authoritarian communist like him, who like him had preached the emancipation of the working masses by the State - after his death, I say, Marx published the first and so far only volume of his great book on “Capital”. In the preface, he bitterly accused Lassalle of having stolen his ideas and even the manner the ideas were expressed; a reproach that was already supremely unjust since Lassalle in one of his writings, directed against Schultz-Delitsch, after having developed certain ideas, added: “These ideas and the expressions that I have used, were not actually invented by me; I have borrowed them from a magnificent, still unpublished work by Marx.” That statement was not enough for Marx. Here then is Marx caught red-handed in propertarianism, and this in the sphere of ideas, which is certainly the least suitable for individual appropriation. - These friends know so well this compulsion of their master that, for example, Engels, also a very intelligent man, Marx’s closest and oldest friend, having published a rather remarkable work on the uprising of the German peasants in the 16th century, was very careful to say in the introduction that the principal ideas that had served as basis for that work were not his one, but Marx’s.
Now let us acknowledge that Marx is a very serious, very profound economic thinker. He has this immense advantage over Proudhon, of being a realist, a materialist. Proudhon, despite all his efforts to shake off the traditions of classical idealism, nevertheless remained all his life an incorrigible idealist, taking inspiration, as I told him two months before his death, sometimes from the Bible, sometimes from Roman law, and always a metaphysician to the tips of his fingers. His great misfortune is that he never studied the natural sciences, and had never adopted their methods - He had instincts of genius which had made him glimpse the right path, but, driven by the bad or idealist habits of his mind, he always fell back into the old errors; which made Proudhon a perpetual contradiction - a vigorous genius, a revolutionary thinker always struggling against the phantoms of idealism, and never managing to overcome them.
Marx as a thinker is on the right track. He has established as a principle that all religious, political and legal evolutions in history are not the causes, but effects of the economic evolutions - It is a great and fecund thought that he did not entirely invent, it has been glimpsed, expressed in part, by many others besides him - But in the end the honour belongs to him of having firmly established it and having posited it as the basis of his entire economic system. On the other hand, Proudhon understood and felt freedom far better than him - Proudhon, when he did not engage in doctrine and metaphysics, had the true instinct of the revolutionary - he adored Satan and he proclaimed an-archy. It is quite possible that Marx could raise himself theoretically to an even more rational system of freedom than Proudhon - but he lacks Proudhon’s instinct. As a German and a Jew, he is an authoritarian from head to toe.
Hence the two opposing systems: the anarchic system of Proudhon, expanded, developed and freed by us from all its metaphysical, idealist, doctrinaire trappings, and firmly accepting matter in science, and social economy in history as the basis of all subsequent developments. And the system of Marx, leader of the German school of authoritarian communists.
Here are the basics of this system. Like us, the authoritarian communists want the abolition of individual property. But they differ from us principally in that they want the expropriation of all individuals by the State, while we want it by the abolition of the State and of the legal right necessarily guaranteed by the State. This is why, at the Basle Congress, we proclaimed the abolition of the right of inheritance, while they opposed it, saying that this abolition would become unnecessary from the moment that the State became the sole proprietor. - The State, they say, must be the only proprietor of the land, and also the only banker. The State bank, replacing the feudal banks existing today, must alone fund the national labour; so that in practice all workers, both in industry and on the land, would become employees of the State. the English communists of that same school declared at the Basle Congress that the earth should be cultivated under the direction of State engineers.
We have rejected this system for two reasons; first, because instead of diminishing the power of the State, it increases it by concentrating all powers in its hands. It is true that they say that their State will be the State of the people, governed by Assemblies and officials directly elected by the people and subject to popular control - It is the representative, parliamentary system, that of universal suffrage, corrected by the referendum and by direct voting on all laws by the people - But we know about the sincerity of these representations. What is clear is that the Marxist system leads, like that of Mazzini, to the establishment of a very strong, so-called popular power, that is to say to the domination of an intelligent minority, alone capable of comprehending the complicated questions inseparable from centralisation, and consequently to the enslavement of the masses and to their exploitation by that intelligent minority. It is the system of revolutionary authorities, of freedom directed from above - that is to say a blatant lie.
The other reason that has made us reject this system is that it leads directly to the establishment of new, large, nation States, separate and necessarily rivals and hostile, to the negation of Internationalism, of humanity. For unless they claim to found a single universal State - an absurd undertaking, condemned by history - they must inevitably establish national States, or even more likely, large States in which one race, the most powerful, most intelligent, will enslave, oppress and exploit other races - so that without admitting it, the Marxists fatally end up in pan-Germanism [the manuscript ends here]