From: "commie00" <commie00-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: Re: marxism vs. leninism
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 13:16:51 -0400


> Frankly this is rubbish.  Bakunin did indeed advocate secret underground
> organistion in this period which if looked at through the localist
> and ahistoric glasses of activism in western Europe or the US today
> can seem a little odd.  But in the context of the time it was
> often a strategy of necessity, don't forget that post 1848
> bakunin was sentenced to death in two countries before being
> deported to a life sentence in the Peter Paul fortress in Russia.

again the excuse of "historical necessity".

however, i was not trying to attack bakunin. but deal with him historically.
i don't think he's useless or evil, but i do think he was clearly
authoritarian in thought word and action, in spite of what he said in some
places. this might have been a "historical necessity", but it doesn't change
it.

> In many European countires of the period revolutionaries operated
> underground because it was not possible to operate on the
> surface except through various front organisations.  Don't
> forget that Marx and Engels joined the secret German organisation
> The League of the Just in 1847 and changed its name to
> the Communist League. The Communist Manifesto was published by
> this secret organisation in 1848 using the German Workers
> Education society as a sort of front.

yup. that was also when they wrote that the working class should take over
the state, which is something marx latter went back on... even going so far
as to criticize himself.

> So in that period having to operate underground was quite
> common.  But was the sort of organisation Bakunin advocated
> "authoritarian, hierarchical" or "controled by a
> secret leader".  The answer to this is no from
> http://struggle.ws/rbr/rbr1_dictator.html

actually, this piece is pretty shoddy, esp since it uses the same quote you
quote below, which i'll deal with in a sec...

> "Thus the sole aim of a secret society must be, not the creation
> of an artificial power outside the people, but the rousing, uniting and
> organising of the spontaneous power of the people; therefore, the only
> possible, the only real revolutionary army is not outside the
> people, it is the people itself."

this proves nothing. it doesn't even deal with the idea of secret
leadership, but just sets forth the aims of the secret leadership. lenin
said the same thing numerous times, and then went about saying how a
leadership was necessary to make this happen. this is an argument which
bakunin openly supported in his debates with marx.

> Elsewhere this idea is developed, essentially Bakunin put forward
> a concept similar to the leadership of ideas.  He wanted a secret
> society that could lead others (including the IWMA) because of
> the infulence of its arguments.

this is not what he said. i don't have quotes easily accessible to me, but
he refered to the "secret hand" and "invisible leadership" and other such
crap a number of times.

>  He explicitly ruled out
> the taking of position in order to dictate policy to larger
> forces.

and then he tried to take possestion of the first international to do just
this (because he explicitly ruled in such action in other places).
whereupon, marx tried to do the same thing more successfully. i think they
were BOTH wrong in this, but they did both do it. denying it only creates
more fiction, which is not what we need.


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