Michael Bakunin
16-28 November 1871
Gentlemen,
I found in the November 12th issue of your esteemed newspaper an article, or rather a very strange letter, which seems to me to demand a reply; not that this letter is important in itself - the author is obviously far too ignorant of most of the things he talks about to be taken seriously - but because, written with a certain flair and with that assurance which inexperienced readers often take for the expression of a deep conviction, based on real science, it is addressing the editors of a workers’ Journal, with the obvious and quite malicious aim of ruining the International in the opinion of the workers of your country.
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To accept Mazzini’s politics and socialism, but at the same time reject his theological beliefs, is to perpetuate the brutal domination of the bourgeoisie and the misery of the proletariat, without even leaving a heavenly ray that could soften the former and console the latter. To accept them, on the other hand, with all the mystical ideas that constitute their very soul, is to consolidate this same bourgeois domination and this same servitude of the people on the earth, but at least leaving the people with the hope of a heavenly socialism...
As for Mazzini’s earthly socialism, it is worthless, derisory, incapable of producing the slightest serious improvement in the economic situation of the people, as I will try to prove to you, if you allow me, in a series of forthcoming articles.
The socialism of the International is not heavenly; it is absolutely real and earthly; and that is precisely what displeases not only all the Mazzinians, but also the bourgeoisie, and for good reason: the bourgeois will easily accommodate itself to a heavenly socialism; Christianity has shown it that it is an excellent socialism, and it is generous enough to relinquish all heavenly property to the proletariat , provided that, in the hope of these future goods, the proletariat consents to remain miserable and enslaved in practice.
But earthly socialism! devil! It is justice no longer in heaven, but on this earth; today not tomorrow, to work for it, for it alone, on this earth.
But earthly socialism! Devil! It is the triumph of justice on this earth; not in the distant future, but in the very near future as the proletariat of Europe is obviously uniting today under the same banner, under the banner of the International. The socialism of the International is the end of the economic privileges and the political domination of the bourgeoisie; it is the abolition of classes and all social inequalities, not only from a political and juridical point of view, but from the point of view of the material means of existence, each person having to live only by his own work. It is the disappearance of bourgeois parasitism and authoritarianism. For bourgeois democrats and politicians, it is finally the necessity of renouncing this sweet habit of commanding the blind, the credulous, of manipulating and moulding them like passive matter, and of making them a pedestal either for favourite ideas born outside these masses and consequently inevitably contrary to their real needs, or for their own person.
This is socialism, as understood by the International. Is it any wonder, then, that it is rejected with the same fervour by the Mazzinians, by the bourgeoisie and by the bourgeois democrats, including, no doubt, the author of this letter?
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Note well every time they have desired to deceive the hunger, misery, suffering and real aspirations of the people; when they have tried to give them, instead of the bread that nourishes, hope and faith, ideas or rather illusions that amuse: idealism always in place of the reality of things and facts; and when, instead of that great and broad popular freedom which alone can ensure a human existence for the proletariat, they wanted to endow it with that so-called political freedom in the State, exclusively favourable to the development of the wealth and domination of the privileged classes and to that of the misery and servitude of the popular masses, they have always resorted to that great historical intermediary, to that eternal ambiguity, the good Lord. For if it were not for God, who on earth could force the masses to endure all that they endure? The rifles [chassepots] of public order would not suffice.
Mazzini’s politics and socialism cannot do without the powerful, so useful support of the good Lord.
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In Mazzini’s State every command comes from above. Below, in the popular masses, only two rights remain: the illusory right to elect their masters, and the very real right, or rather duty, to obey them afterwards, and to let themselves be educated and directed by them, in accordance with the ideas they will shape, or that the God of love, the sole legislator and sovereign according to Mazzini, deems fit to suggest to them, on the National Thought. In short, as in the formula of Napoleon III, these masters of the republic will reign, govern and administer the people “by the grace of God and by the will of the people”: a formula in which the grace of God necessarily and always annihilates the will of the people. It is impossible to imagine a more despotic and more pitiful government, above all more opposed to the emancipation of the masses.
By contrast, this system should not displease the bourgeoisie too much. For as long as the principle of authority and command, a principle essentially inherent to the State, remains standing, they can be certain of retaining this right, or rather this privilege, so lucrative and so sweet, of command in their hands, provided that their pockets are left full. Today it is the wealthy who rule; and as long as the economic world remains organised in such a way that bourgeois pockets are filled by the labour of the proletariat, which becomes all the more wretched the more it fills them, no force in the world, no new political law, not even Mazzini’s religious propaganda can prevent the bourgeoisie from control over the proletariat. Provided, then, that Mazzini guarantees the bourgeoisie the integrity of their pockets, they will accept his republic if necessary, while preferring the current regime, as it is safer.
The integrity of bourgeois pockets does not mean only the possession of what they have, that would be too little, and if they had to be content with what they have, they would consume all their wealth in a very short period of time.
Imagine a social organisation in which the proletariat would not be forced to sell its productive power, its labour, to others; where, organised according to justice, in cooperative associations, it would work for itself, no longer needing bourgeois capital to fund, to fuel its work; and it is only under this condition will it be able to enjoy the full product of its labour, as justice demands, and as Mazzini himself says he wants. Where will it end up then? The landowner will remain with his land, the manufacturer with his industrial establishment, both without workers. But neither the land nor the factory produce on its own. The land is indeed endowed with natural productive force, but left to itself without cultivation, it is incapable of producing social values, incapable of providing wealth, or even sufficient food for a somewhat civilised person. Therefore, to avoid starving, the landowner will be forced to sell his land, and the industrialist his factory, to whom? To the collectively organised proletariat. In return, they will have money and will become what are properly called capitalists.
But capital also, as monetary value, represented by gold, platinum, silver, copper coins or by bank notes accredited or not by the State, produces nothing by itself. Gather together as many gold coins as you like; they will not multiply. Coins are precious because with them you can buy everything you need. But what you buy, you will consume, and once consumed you will have to buy it again, with a capital reduced by everything you spent on the initial purchase. In this way, you will soon end up consuming your capital.
For Capital to produce, it must be productivity employed either in agriculture, industry, or commerce, or it must speculate either on large economic enterprises or on government debt. In all these cases, even in the latter two which at first glance seem to have no connection with the labour of workers, it is this labour that pays the interest and all the other more or less acknowledged gains of capital.
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Why does he pay them? Because he needs capital, and he does not have any. He needs capital for his work: to construct all the buildings, the machines, and to buy all the raw materials necessary for his industry; and then to feed himself and to support his family while he works. All of this requires considerable upfront expenditure, without which no work could be undertaken nor continued. Therefore, workers need capital, and lacking it, they must borrow it under the conditions imposed by the capitalist.
But in the social organisation we are talking about, and which Mazzini himself condescends to promise to the Italian workers, the workers will no longer need bourgeois capital to fund, to fuel their work; they will have their own capital, collective according to us, individual according to Mazzini - which implies a contradiction, because the moment workers become individual capitalists, they will no longer be workers, but exploiting bourgeois, the richest necessarily exploiting the poorest. But let us leave that question for another time. Let it suffice for us to know that, in the social order that Mazzini dreams of, every worker must enjoy the full product of his labour which can only be possible if he is at the same time the owner of all the capital he needs for his industry; which means that they will no longer need bourgeois capital.
But then, the latter, unable to extract anything from the labour of workers, will be unable to increase, or even maintain, their wealth. It will soon be consumed by its owners, the bourgeois capitalists. To maintain its position, it must be able to exploit the labour of workers, but it can only do so as long as the workers need its capital, that is to say as long as they themselves are deprived of it, as long as they remain poor.
From this it follows that guaranteeing the pockets of the bourgeoisie does not only mean guaranteeing the bourgeoisie the security of their current property, but also guaranteeing them the power to exploit the labour of the workers by means of this property, that is to say the poverty of the proletariat; its poverty and its permanent servitude, which is the necessary consequence of it.
This is what Mazzini does not understand. We should not blame him for that. You cannot become a sincere theologian and a serious economist at the same time. One excludes the other - heaven makes you disdain and misunderstand the earth. Unfortunately, or fortunately for the workers, they are bound to the earth by their suffering, their needs, they misery, their daily servitude; their chains are therefore entirely material and can only be broken by material means. All the heavenly idealism in the world is powerless against it!
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Mazzini absolutely forbade workers from forming associations for collective resistance, from striking - that formidable weapon, and the only legal means workers could use today to defend themselves against the greed and arbitrary power of their bosses. Only through their internationally organised strikes were English, Belgian, German workers able to achieve the resounding victories that you know, and only through the strength, the perseverance, the international unity they displayed in this struggle were they able to command the respect of the bourgeois. Not by their humble prayers. These barbarians have no prophet, they have not learned to pray. But while remaining within the strictest legality, they proudly upheld their rights, and they triumphed.
All of this greatly displeases Mazzini. Naturally, it also displeases the bourgeoisie, who like legal means when they serve their interests, but not when they are used against them. Mazzini dislikes it because it is a brutal, material and no way religious means, a means that could alienate the bourgeoisie.
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In Mazzini’s republic, the bourgeoisie will rule [commanderont] as they rule in the Monarchy; with this sole difference, that then they will rule the people in the name of popular sovereignty, as they do in France today, which will naturally be a great consolation for the people. But since they will rule, they will enrich themselves. For all history proves it to us, with the exception of a small number of extraordinary honest and selfless individuals, who are by that very fact a confirmation rather than an overturning of the rule, the power of both individuals and classes in society always transforms into wealth, just as wealth in turn inevitably becomes power; it is a natural social law and just as inevitable as that recently discovered law of the transformation of motion into heat and heat into motion.
So the bourgeoisie will rule, and because they rule, they will become rich. From what source? Always from the same one, the only source of all wealth: the labour of the people. And the people? The people will have the precious right to elect their exploiters and masters; but in reality, they will remain what they are today: the very humble and very hungry providers and enrichers of the bourgeoisie.
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But does Mazzini himself not promise the workers serious social reforms? The enjoyment of the full product of their labour, for example, which either means nothing at all, or can only mean this: that the workers will henceforth pay no interest to the Capitalist, nor leave any profit to the employers of labour, to the heads of industry, the manufacturers or bosses, because grouped into productive associations, they will collectively be their own capitalists, their own managers, they own bosses?
Without doubt he promises it, but at the same time, as we have already observed, he promises the bourgeoisie that the economic and legal foundations of the current society will remain intact, and that is enough to reassure the bourgeoisie, because, being better economists that Mazzini, they know very well that as long as these foundations are to be religiously preserved in Mazzini’s republic, the spectre of economic and social justice, which terrifies them so horribly will always remain a powerless phantom, and the labour of the proletariat will continue to fill their bottomless pockets, in the future as in the past... But then, the proletariat deceived in its hope, will revolt! Not at all, Mazzini’s religion, which will be taught in the People’s Schools as the latest and highest expression of National Thought, will destroy, will stifle in its heart any thought of revolt. Revolt is of Satan, not of God. God commands sacrifice, devotion, the fulfilment of duties, but he repudiates the asserting of rights; for rights divide us, and only the religion of duty is capable of uniting men:
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In the meantime, Mazzini advises workers to purify themselves, improve themselves, educate themselves, teach each other, and spread amongst their comrades in suffering “l'idea dei loro futuri destini, l'idea d'una Nazione che darą loro nome” {“The idea of their future destiny, the idea of a Nation that will give them a name”} (as if they do not have one today! They call themselves by the noble name of the workers, of the Proletariat, of the wretched, of the poor to whom belongs the future, the world, if only they knew how to conquer it by organising their strength, in the name of their rights and their duties which are not the principle but the consequence of their rights, in the name of humanity and not of Divinity, in short) “che darą loro nome, educazione” {“what will give them a name, an education”} (the Mazzinian Catechism, replacing the Christian catechism) “...lavoro e retribuzione proporzionata” (“work and appropriate renumeration”} (Aha! Here at least is a rather vague promise, it is true, but nevertheless positive. We will see in what manner Mazzini intends to keep this promise?) “e coscienza e missione d’amore” {“a conscience and a mission of love”} (that is to say, of apostles of the Massinian religion).
Let us grant that all this is truly good for the future, but what will Italian workers do now to alleviate their suffering? We see that in all other countries, to alleviate their suffering not fundamentally, but momentarily, temporarily, workers have recourse to the very powerful means of the strike: in England, Belgium, Spain, and even in France, despite the public order that M. Thiers maintains there with the help of Bonapartist rifles, workers inspired and organised by the International, joining hands across borders, establish resistance funds, and by means of formidable strikes force the Heads of Industry to reduce hours and increase their wages. The victories recently won by the workers of England, Belgium and Germany prove that it is a very effective means, which also offers the immense advantage of making the alliance, the fraternal association of workers of all countries, without distinction of trade or nation, closer and more real...
But we have also seen that Mazzini absolutely does not want strikes. For a strike is the beginning of a revolt, quite legal, it is true, by the workers against the bourgeois; it is the beginning of the social war, and Mazzini wants nothing to do with it. For it would fraternally unite, against the Italian bourgeoisie, the movement of the Italian proletariat with the international movement of the proletariat of Europe and America; and would thereby make impossible the exclusively national, messianically Italian alliance of the proletariat of Italy with the bourgeois of Italy, preventing it from uniting with them in a common political movement for the establishment of the great national Republic or the Mazzinian Church-State.
So what are the economic measures recommended by Mazzini to Italian workers in the present? They are associations for mutual aid and education, and, as far as possible, the establishment of cooperative consumer societies.
All his socialism, at least for now, is limited to that. This is what is called in Germany, the socialism of Schullz-Delitsch, bourgeois socialism.
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The idea first arose in France before the 1848 revolution. So it originated, at most, thirty years ago in that accursed country which knows nothing but revolutions in the name of human rights, never for God. But the bourgeois reaction that soon followed the magnificent triumph of the Parisian proletariat prevented the practical development of this idea in Paris and in France. It was English workers, many of them Owenites, who first had the honour of putting this idea into widespread practice. The astonishing successes of the Rochdale cooperative association, founded in 1844 and primarily focused on consumption, are too well known for me to need to elaborate further here. After the English, it was the turn of the German workers, and only later that of the French workers.
In Germany, the honour of founding the bourgeois cooperative system belongs primarily to M. Schullz-Delitsch, a member of the Federal Parliament and the Progressive Party, a fanatical unitarist and, as is well known, an ardent Prussophile. Initially, he focused mainly on creating mutual credit associations, Banks of the People. By 1865, there were nearly a thousand of them in Germany. There exist today several thousand cooperative associations of all kinds, including credit, consumer and producer cooperatives. Does this solve the social question in Germany? Not al all. The misery of the proletariat remains the same; indeed, it increases daily.
Does this mean that the cooperative system is bad? Not at all. On the contrary, we are convinced that this system, widely organised and especially internationally and replacing everywhere the current system of production funded by bourgeois capital, contains within it all the seeds of the economic emancipation of the working masses. But we are also convinced that it will only be able to really develop all these seeds upon the sole basis of economic and social equality, when capital, industrial establishments, raw materials and the instruments of work, naturally including the land, ceasing to be the hereditary property of individuals, will become the collective property of productive workers associations, both industrial and agricultural, freely organised and federated amongst themselves.
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The same will be true of the relations between capital and labour as long as they remain separate, represented by two different classes, one belonging to a propertied minority, the other to the mass of the proletariat. The owner of capital will always command the worker and impose conditions on him that will not even be determined by the will of the capitalist, but by the competition of different capitals on the one side and, on the other, by what the workers will make or rather will be forced to make amongst themselves, in short, by what is called supply and demand.
As long as the worker is forced by poverty and hunger to sell his labour as a vile commodity, his labour will necessarily be treated as such, and will be taxed according to the real conditions of supply and demand.
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I will not dwell on mutual aid societies. They are too widespread in Italy and their effects are too well known to require discussion. Mutual aid societies are valuable and necessary to workers from two points of view. First, by providing temporary and always excessively limited relief to workers - who need it, without ever being able, of course, to improve their miserable condition in any way that is consistent and serious; and above all, because they bring workers closer together, give them a beginning of association and organisation - creating as it were the first seeds of collective working-class thought, strength and action. All workers’ associations, international or not, should organise themselves into mutual aid and education societies, for this is the beginning of the salutary practice of fraternity, as well as a condition for properly working-class thought. It should also be noted that most sections of the International have organised similar societies within themselves, societies which work all the better because all the rich, titled, official and non-official bourgeois are excluded from them.
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To bear serious fruit and to turn entirely and effectively to the benefit of the workers, mutual credit societies, banks of the people and consumer cooperative societies should be complemented by productive cooperative societies. Then naturally the workers’ associations, becoming their own capitalists and the full masters of their industrial establishments, would alone benefit, and this time in a very real manner, from the cheapness of credit and the objects necessary for life, produced by the people’s banks and by the consumer societies.
But under current economic conditions, can workers seriously establish cooperative productive societies? Which is to say, can they, with their meagre savings and the credit that people’s banks would offer them, raise capital capable of competing with large bourgeois capital? We have seen that in modern industry, built upon individual or patriarchal hereditary property, it is the large factories which, being able to produce more cheaply then small and medium sized industrial establishments inevitably tend to crush the latter, and not only do they tend to, but they do succeed, slowly it is true, yet in an unfailing manner, always. Large capitals, usually coming together today in joint-stock companies both for the construction of roads and communications, as well as for industry and commerce, devour medium and small capitals. As a country’s wealth grows, the number of rich people, who have become infinitely richer than before, decreases, and in the same proportion the number of average and small fortunes also decreases. The great banking, industrial and commercial bourgeoisie tends to form a despotic and narrow oligarchy, which, seizing control of all the economic activity of the country, becomes economically and politically its absolute arbiter so to speak.
This is a fact that everyone can see happening in Italy today. And those who blame political institutions are quite mistaken. Political institutions can do nothing about it; they are merely the consequence and inevitable expression of a fact, an economic inevitability. It is undeniable that, produced by this inevitability, they become the armed guarantee of this evil economic order, so that to radically change the latter, it is absolutely necessary to overthrow them, destroy them. But they would be very mistaken those who would think - as all bourgeois republicans generally do - that without touching the sacred foundations of individual and hereditary property, which Mazzini defends with such ferocity, from such a laudable bourgeois point of view, currently against us, it would be enough to replace the current political institutions with new ones, with Mazzini’s bourgeois-theocratic republic for example, to bring about a true emancipation of the popular masses.
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Productive societies however pose a danger from the point of view of workers’ emancipation: that of creating, within the working masses themselves, a new class of exploiters of the labour of the proletariat. This sometimes happens - and this is precisely what happened in the Rochdale cooperative association - that a few dozen workers by a miracle of energy, unity, intelligence and sacrifice manage not only to found but to make a small cooperative productive establishment thrive. They thus become the collective owners of a certain more or less considerable capital which allows them to expand their business and employ a larger workforce. They recruit new workers. How do they receive them? As associates and therefore as collective co-owners of a capital they did not help to create? No, because from a bourgeois point of view, that seems unfair. So they treat them as mere wage-workers, in relation to whom they collectively represent a bourgeois exploiter.
It was precisely with a view to this danger that the second congress of the International, held n Lausanne in September 1867, while recommending the formation of credit, consumer and productive societies wherever possible, passed the following resolution:
1) The Congress believes that the efforts attempted today by workers’ associations (if these become widespread while retaining the current form) tend to constitute a fourth estate, between which lies a fifth estate more miserable than itself (the great masses of the proletariat).
2) To avoid this danger, the Congress believes it is necessary for the proletariat to be fully convinced of this idea: that social transformation can only be achieved in a radical and definite way by means of acting upon the whole of society and in accordance with reciprocity and justice (that is to say by a social revolution, peaceful is possible, violent if necessary, and which must change the economic bases of society, by the transformation of individually inherited property into collective property).
3) Nevertheless, the Congress believes that all efforts by workers’ associations should be encouraged, provided that the levy of capital on labour is eliminated as far as possible from within these associations, that is to say, that the idea of mutuality is introduced into them.
We see that the international, far from opposing the cooperative system in any of its applications, actually encourages it. Thus, within the International Workers’ Association itself, many cooperative societies have been formed in England as well as in France, in Belgium as well as in Germany and Spain which support each other. Only because the International takes the emancipation of the working masses seriously, demands it in its entirety, does it harbour no illusions about the application of this system under current economic conditions. It recognises and has experienced its usefulness in two respects: first, in that of a temporary and undoubtedly very partial, but nevertheless valuable, relief of workers’ suffering; but above all from the point of view of the even more valuable experience that the workers acquire there, by getting used to establishing, organising and managing their own affairs without the intervention of any bourgeois tutor, pontiff or guardian angel.
But since the International knows the nature of the bourgeoisie better than Mazzini seems to - being composed of workers, it knows it through harsh experience - and since the International knows full well that the triumph of equality, justice and broad popular freedom cannot be achieved without a terrible struggle, its primary concern is not to establish a establish a cooperative system now, whose full rational organisation and conformity with this justice is simply impossible under the present economic circumstances, but to organise the workers’ forces and to raise the workers’ spirit for this struggle. That is precisely why it is less concerned with cooperation than with strikes.
Strikes have this advantage of clearly separating the working masses from the bourgeois class, and for the workers to triumph and not be deceived once against as they have always been until now, this separation must be realised everywhere. The worker of every country must know that the workers of all countries, by their needs, by their sufferings, by the sameness of their ideas and their aspirations, are their brothers, while the local bourgeois, their compatriot by language, even if it were the language of Gregory VII, Savonarola and Dante, is their national enemy.
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