From: JessEcoh-AT-cs.com
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2004 15:57:26 EDT
Subject: [postanarchism] Lehning: "The Use of Reading Bakunin for Anti-Imperialists"


from http://www.christiebooks.com/html/history/archives.html

THE USE OF READING BAKUNIN FOR ANTI-IMPERIALISTS

ARTHUR LEHNING


On imperialism itself, Bakunin has nothing specifically to say. That is not 
strange, because imperialism in its modern form had not yet appeared; besides, 
opposition to imperialism by a revolutionary is a rather obvious thing. But I 
think Bakunin's writings can be useful to anti-imperialists in several ways. 
Firstly, on account of the general view held by Bakunin about the essence of 
the revolutionary struggle and his conceptions about federalism and the state. 
Secondly on account of his activities in the eighteen-forties.

As far as the last point is concerned, it is clear that I don't wish to 
stress it too much. All historical parallels can be abusive. However, it is not 
abusive to point out the similarities between various kinds of Nineteenth Century 
nationalism and anti-imperialism in our time. This is not only because a 
great deal of today's anti-imperialist fight is carried out on nationalist 
platforms, but also on account of the intensity with which the banner of then and 
that of today monopolize the attention of men with radical consciousness. In this 
respect, Bakunin has important things to say.

Bakunin's so-called "revolutionary panslavism" in the 1840s is usually 
misunderstood. In his famous Appeal to the Slavs (1848) he advocated a coalition 
between the Slavs of Austria, the Hungarians and the democratic Germans in order 
to liquidate the Austrian Empire and to coalize with the Poles for an 
independent Poland and a revolution in Russia. He hoped that a Slav Federation would 
encourage the Slavs to take part in the struggle the revolution was waging 
throughout Europe. The social liberation of the masses and the emancipation of the 
suppressed nationalities should, in the view he then held, lead to a 
universal federation of European republics. After the failure of the Polish 
insurrection of 1863, however, Bakunin no longer believed in using the banner of 
nationalism for social revolutionary aims. By 1964 he had definitely formulated the 
philosophical, political and socialist ideas which are associated with his 
name. From then on he would defend social revolution on an international scale, 
and reject every form of nationalism. Nationality is not a principle, he wrote, 
it is a fact, as legitimate as individuality. But neither peace nor the 
unification of Europe would be possible as long as the centralized states continued 
to exist.

The point I wish to make is that yesterday's nationalist faith, like the 
anti-imperialist dedication of many present-day revolutionaries, though deserving 
our admiration, can be insidious and lead to dangerously wrong conclusions -- 
such as that by putting an end to imperialist domination the revolution will 
be achieved and the way towards socialism be paved.

No one will deny the importance of analyzing modern forms of imperialism, but 
it is not less important to be cautious about the methods to be used in this 
fight if one wants to prevent replacing imperialist domination by a national 
form of exploitation and despotism. This, of course, involves the fundamental 
question of what means to employ to achieve the aim of socialism and freedom; 
and experience allows us to say that the end of imperialism and the destruction 
of capitalism in a given country does not necessarily solve the problem of 
oppression. We may ask meaningfully the capital question whether the 
instauration of some kind of revolutionary state brings us any nearer to a real socialist 
society. I don't intend to try to answer it here, only to insist that it is 
not an academic question as much as it seems. Few people will deny the fact 
that in the so-called socialist countries the state is not withering away, but 
there might still be some who think that their regimes may easier pave its way. 
This, however, may be doubted in the light of the dominating trend of these 
countries and in that of the history of the last five decades.

Bakunin's view has importance also in that it does not see a break between 
nationalism and imperialism, state domination inland and abroad. Marx and the 
Marxists considered imperialism primarily as a consequence of capitalism, 
Bakunin saw it as a consequence of strong states and centralized power. Obviously, 
there are imperialist campaigns in the twentieth century that cannot be 
explained in terms of economic forces. Although Bakunin agreed with most of the 
Marxist analysis of the economic system, he did not believe that socialism could be 
achieved by centralizing power, in which hand it ever was.

Modern capitalist production and banking speculation, Bakunin wrote, demand 
for their full development an advanced centralized state apparatus. The modern 
state is necessarily a military state in its aims, and a military state is 
driven on by the very same logic to become a conquering state. A strong state can 
only have one foundation: military and bureaucratic centralization. Every 
state, even if dressed up in the most libertarian democratic form, is necessarily 
based upon domination and violence, that is upon despotism -- concealed 
despotism, but not less dangerous.

For Bakunin, equality without liberty was an irredeemable fraud, "perpetuated 
by deceivers to deceive fools". Equality must be created by "the spontaneous 
organization of the work and the common property of the manufacturing 
associations and by the equally spontaneous federation of the communities, not by the 
supreme and paternal activity of the state". Equality without liberty meant 
for him the despotism of the state, and in his opinion the state cannot survive 
for a single day without "possessing an exploiting and privileged class: the 
bureaucracy". The conspiracy of Babeuf and all similar attempts to establish a 
socialist society were bound to fail, because in all these systems equality 
was associated with the power and authority of the state and in consequence 
excluded liberty.

The most sinister alliance imaginable would combine socialism and absolutism 
-- that is to say, the aspirations of the people for economic liberation and 
material prosperity with dictatorship and the concentration of all political 
and social forces in the state: "May the future preserve us from the benevolence 
of despotism, and may it also save us from the damaging and stultifying 
consequences of authoritarian, doctrinaire or institutional socialism. Let us be 
socialists, but let us never become sheep. Let us seek justice, complete 
political, economic and social justice, but without any sacrifice of liberty. There 
can be no life, no humanity without liberty, and a form of socialism which 
excluded liberty or did not accept it as a basis and as the only creative 
principle, would lead us straight back to slavery and bestiality."

For these reasons, Bakunin opposed the belief that a social revolution can be 
decreed and organized by a dictatorship or by a constituent assembly set up 
by a political revolution. Only after the abolition of the state -- the first, 
the essential condition for real freedom -- can society be reorganized, but 
not from above, not according to some visionary plan, nor by decrees spewed 
forth by some dictatorial power. This would simply lead, again, to the 
establishment of a state and to the formation of a ruling "aristocracy", i.e. a whole 
class of people who have nothing in common with the masses and who will begin to 
exploit and suppress the people all over again, under the pretence of acting 
in the general interest, or in order to save the state. "The victory of the 
Jacobins or the Blanquists would mean the death of the revolution."

The Great Revolution, which for the first time in history had proclaimed the 
liberty of citizens and men, by making itself the heir of the monarchy which 
it had destroyed, revived at the same time this negation of all liberty, 
centralization and omnipotence of the state. "Seventy-five years of sad and harsh 
experience," Bakunin wrote to a Frenchman in 1868, "spent in sterile tossing 
between a freedom that was several times recovered and always lost again, and 
state despotism ever more victorious, have proved to France and the world that in 
1793 your Girondins were right against your Jacobins. Robespierre, 
Saint-Just, Carnot, Couthon, Cambon and so many other citizens of the Montagne were 
great and pure patriots, but it is nonetheless true that they established the 
machine of government, that formidable centralization of the state, which made the 
military dictatorship of Napoleon I possible, natural, necessary, and which, 
having survived all subsequent revolutions, by no means diminished but rather 
preserved, cosseted and developed the Restoration and by the July Monarchy as 
by the Republic of 1848, was bound to lead ultimately to the destruction of 
all your liberties."

A radical revolution can only be brought about by an attack on the 
institutions and by the destruction of property and its associate, the state. Then it 
will not be necessary to destroy people and thereby provoke the inevitable 
reaction which the massacre of the people always causes in every society.

That is, for Bakunin, the great secret of revolution. It must begin with the 
dissolution of the state; the disbanding of the army and the police; the 
abolition of the courts; the burning of all bonds, bills and securities; the repeal 
of those bourgeois laws which sanction private property, and their 
replacement by expropriation. The entire social capital -- including public buildings, 
raw materials, the property owned by the church and state -- should be put in 
the hands of the workers' organizations. At the outbreak of the revolution the 
community should be organized by the "Permanent Federation of the Barricades". 
The council of the revolutionary community should consist of one or two 
delegates from each barricade, one from each street or suburb; these deputies, with 
a binding mandate, should always be responsible, and subject to recall.

Bakunin did not mean that there should not be a revolution without violence, 
but that this should be directed against institutions rather than against 
persons. The revolution should, however, not develop a new authority, i.e. the 
right to coerce. Those who carry out the repression will do so with the approval 
of the revolutionaries; this is the only legitimation for violence in a 
revolution, since law does not exist. The unavoidable violence should be short and 
not lead to an organization invested with authority to repress. In all his 
writings Bakunin rejected the idea of a "revolutionary government", of Committees 
of Public Safety", including the so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat". 
For such a new authority, such a "proletarian state", in theory representing 
the workers, would lead in practice to a new ruling class.

Revolution means to overthrow the state, because social revolution must put 
an end to the old system of organization based upon violence, giving full 
liberty to the masses, groups, communes and associations, and likewise to the 
individuals themselves. It would destroy once and for all the historic cause of all 
violence, the power and the very existence of the state, the downfall of 
which will carry down with it all the iniquities of juridical right and all the 
falsehoods of the various religious cults, that simply are the consecration, 
ideal as well as real, of all the violence represented, guaranteed and furthered 
by the state.

Poverty and despondency are not sufficient to provoke a social revolution. 
They may lead to local revolts, but are inadequate to arouse whole masses of 
people. Only when the people are stirred by a universal idea evolving from the 
depths of the folk instinct and clarified by events and experience, when people 
have a general idea of their rights, can revolution take place. One cannot aim 
at destruction without having at least a remote conception of the new order 
that should succeed to the one extant; and the more vividly that future is 
visualized, the more powerful is the force of destruction. The nearer such 
visualization approaches the truth, that is the more it conforms to the necessary 
development of the actual social world, the more salutary are the results of 
destructive action, determined not only by the degree of its intensity but also by 
the means it takes to reach the positive ideal. Exploitation and oppression 
are not merely economic and political, and would therefore not be automatically 
abolished by a conquest of political power and the organization of the new 
economic system. They have one common source: authority.

Bakunin held the view that every dictatorship could have no aim but that of 
self-perpetuation and that it could beget only slavery in the people tolerating 
it. Freedom can only be created by freedom. The new social organization 
should be set up by the free integration of workers' associations, villages, 
communes and regions from below upwards, conforming to the needs and instincts of 
the people. That was what Bakunin meant by federalism. Smaller groups should 
federate into greater units. Of course he was well aware that a certain economic 
centralization was inevitable, as a consequence of the development of large 
scale production, but he rejected the view that these problems could only be 
solved by political centralization. He insisted on the need of collective 
ownership of property and argued that if the authoritarian state, with its unnatural 
centralization, would become the basis of social organization, the unavoidable 
result would be the destruction of the liberty of individual man and of 
smaller groups, and this would lead to new exploitation and to endless wars.

In Bakunin's theory, free productive associations, having become their own 
masters, would expand one day beyond national frontiers and form one vast 
economic federation, with a parliament informed by detailed statistics on a world 
scale, that would decide and distribute the output of world industry among the 
various countries, so that there would no longer or hardly ever be industrial 
crises, stagnation, disasters and waste of capital: human labour, emancipation, 
each and every man would regenerate the world.

Contrary to Marx, Bakunin generally regarded the peasants as a revolutionary 
force, though historically the essential role belonged to the proletarians in 
the cities. In his Letters to a Frenchman, written two months after the 
outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War and in which Bakunin exposed his views on the 
way the revolutionary movement had to take, he gave practical advice on how to 
overcome the antagonism between workers and peasants. In order to win over the 
peasants to the side of the revolution, it would be necessary to use great 
prudence, for ideas and propaganda accepted by the workers will have the opposite 
effect on the peasants. Their fatal antagonism had to be eliminated, 
otherwise the revolution would be paralyzed. It would be necessary to undermine in 
fact, and not in words, the authority of the state.

Bakunin advocated that delegates should be sent to the villages to promote a 
revolutionary movement amongst the peasants. Communism or collectivism should 
not be imposed on them, even if the workers had enough power to do so, because 
such an authoritarian communism would need the regularly organized violence 
of the state, and this would lead to the reestablishment of authority and a new 
privileged class. The revolutionary authorities -- and there should be as few 
of them as possible -- must promote the revolution not by issuing decrees but 
by stirring the masses to action. They must under no circumstances foist any 
artificial organization whatsoever upon the masses. On the contrary, they 
should foster the self-organization of the masses into autonomous bodies, 
federated from the bottom upward.

Bakunin differed from Marx and Engels not only with regard to the role of the 
Slavs, but also in his appreciation of the political future of Europe, and he 
was far from agreeing with them that Bismark and Victor Emmanuel in their stri
ving towards unification of their respective countries did useful work for 
socialism. On July 20, 1870 Marx wrote to Engels: "If the Prussians are 
victorious, the centralization of state power will be useful to the centralization of 
the German working class." And a few weeks later Engels replied that Bismark 
now, as in 1866, did "a part of our job". National unity with its consequences 
of political and economic centralization was, in the opinion of Marx, a 
prerequisite of socialism. According to Marxian dialectics, the capture of the 
centralized state by a working class organized in a political party would open up 
towards socialism and the ultimate "withering away" of the state. In this 
context, the predominance of Marx's theory, that is his conception of this 
historical process, became itself an element and a precondition of this process.

Bakunin understood this basic concept perfectly well but did not agree with 
it. "What has made us reject this system," he wrote, pointing to revolutionary 
authorities, liberty directed from above,"is that it leads directly to the 
establishment of a new set of great national states, which would be separate and 
necessarily rivals and hostile to each other, and to the negation of 
internationalism." Bakunin feared that this development would lead to a new caesarism, 
and after the Franco-Prussian War he predicted an era of ceaseless wars and 
the danger of a prusso-germanization of Europe. Two years before his death he 
wrote: "Bismarkism, that is militarism, the police and financial monopoly merged 
into a single whole, namely the modern state, is everywhere victorious.. 
Conceivably, this powerful and scientific negation of all that is human may 
continue triumphant for another ten or fifteen years."

Certainly, this triumph has been rampant for more than a century, and is 
still very much alive.


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