Michael Bakunin
1870
“L’empire Knouto-Germanique et la Révolution Sociale: Première livraison”, Œuvres, Tome II (1907)
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Discipline and trust are like unity. These are excellent things when they are properly applied, disastrous when directed at that which does not warrant them. A passionate lover of liberty, I confess that I am very wary of those who constantly invoke discipline. It is extremely dangerous, especially in France, where discipline, for the most part, means, on the one hand, despotism, and on the other automatism. In France, the mystical cult of authority, the love of command and the habit of being commanded have destroyed in society, as well as in the vast majority of individuals, all sense of freedom, all faith in the spontaneous and living order that only freedom can create. Speak to them of freedom, and they will immediately cry anarchy; for it seems to them that the moment that this discipline, always oppressive and violent, of the State ceases to act, the whole of society must tear itself apart and collapse. There lies the secret of the astonishing enslavement that French society has endured since its great revolution. Robespierre and the Jacobins bequeathed to it the cult of State discipline. You will find this cult in full in your bourgeois Republicans, official and unofficial, and it is this that is destroying France today. It is destroying it by paralysing the only source and only means of deliverance that remains to it: the free deployment of popular forces; and by making it seek its salvation in the authority and illusory action of a State, which today represents nothing more than an empty despotic pretension, accompanied by absolute impotence.
Although I am an enemy of what is called discipline in France, I recognise that a certain discipline, not automatic, but voluntary and thoughtful, and perfectly in accord with the freedom of individuals, remains and will always be necessary whenever many individuals, freely united, undertake any collective work or action. This discipline is then nothing more than the voluntary and considered alignment of all individual efforts towards a common goal. At the moment of action, in the midst of the struggle, roles are naturally divided according to the abilities of each, appreciated and judged by the entire group; some lead and command, others execute the commands. But no position becomes fixed, immutable or irrevocably attached to any one person. Hierarchical order and advancement do not exist, so the commander of yesterday can become the subordinate of today. No one rises above the others, or if they do, it is only to fall back down a moment later, like the waves of the sea, always returning to the salutary level of equality.
In this system, there is no longer power properly speaking. Power is absorbed into the collective, and it becomes the sincere expression of the freedom of each, the faithful and serious realisation of the will of all; each only obeys because the leader of the day commands nothing but what they themselves would want. This is truly human discipline, the discipline necessary for the organisation of freedom. This is not the discipline advocated by your republican statesmen. They want the old French discipline, automatic, routine and blind. The leader, not freely elected and only for a day, but imposed by the State for a long time if not forever, commands, and you must obey. The salvation of France, they tell you, and even of the Freedom of France, depends upon it, Passive obedience, the foundation of all despotisms, will therefore also be the cornerstone upon which you will build your republic.
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