peaccenicked
14th March 2002, 10:44
''Versus The Anarchists
Bakunin, who up to 1868 had intrigued against the International, joined it after he had suffered a fiasco at the Berne Peace Congress and at once began to conspire within it against the General Council. Bakunin has a peculiar theory of his own, a medley of Proudhonism and communism, the chief point of which is, in the first place, that he does not regard capital -- and therefore the class antagonism between capitalists and wage-workers which has arisen through social development -- but the state as the main evil to be abolished. While the great mass of the Social-Democratic workers hold our view that the state power is nothing more than the organisation with which the ruling classes -- landlords and capitalists -- have provided themselves in order to protect their social privileges, Bakunin maintains that it is the state which has created capital, therefore, the state is the chief evil, it is above all the state which must be done away with and then capitalism will go to blazes of itself. We, on the contrary, say: Do away with capital, the concentration of all means of production in the hands of the few, and the state will fall of itself. The difference is an essential one: Without a previous social revolution the abolition of the state is nonsense; the abolition of capital is precisely the social revolution and involves a change in the whole mode of production. Now then, inasmuch as to Bakunin the state is the main evil, nothing must be done which can maintain the existence of the state, that is, of any state, whether it be a republic, a monarchy or anything else. Hence complete abstention from all politics. To commit a political act, and especially to take part in an election, would be a betrayel of principle. The thing to do is to carry on propaganda, heap abuse upon the state; organise, and when ALL the workers are won over, that is, the majority, depose the authorities, abolish the state and replace it by the organisation of the International. This great act, with which the millennium begins, is called social liquidation.
All this sounds extremely radical, and is so simple that it can be learnt by heart in five minutes; that is why this theory of Bakunin's has speedily found favor in Italy and Spain among young lawyers, doctors and other doctrinaires. But the mass of workers will never allow itself to be persuaded that the public affairs of their own countries are not also their own affairs, they are by nature political and whoever tries to make out to them that they should leave politics alone will in the end be left alone. To preach to the workers that they should in all circumstances abstain from politics is to drive them into the arms of the priests or the bourgeois republicans.
Now, as the International, according to Bakunin, was not formed for political struggle but in order that it may at once replace the old state organisation as soon as social liquidation takes place, it follows that it must come as near as possible to the Bakuninist ideal of the society of the future. In this society there will above all be no authority, for authority=state=an absolute evil. (Indeed, how these people propose to run a factory, operate a railway or steer a ship without having in the last resort one deciding will, without single management, they of course do not tell us.) The authority of the majority over the minority also ceases. Every individual and every community is autonomous; but as to how a society, even of only two people, is possible unless each gives up some of his autonomy, Bakunin only maintains silence." unauthored from net
Bakunin, who up to 1868 had intrigued against the International, joined it after he had suffered a fiasco at the Berne Peace Congress and at once began to conspire within it against the General Council. Bakunin has a peculiar theory of his own, a medley of Proudhonism and communism, the chief point of which is, in the first place, that he does not regard capital -- and therefore the class antagonism between capitalists and wage-workers which has arisen through social development -- but the state as the main evil to be abolished. While the great mass of the Social-Democratic workers hold our view that the state power is nothing more than the organisation with which the ruling classes -- landlords and capitalists -- have provided themselves in order to protect their social privileges, Bakunin maintains that it is the state which has created capital, therefore, the state is the chief evil, it is above all the state which must be done away with and then capitalism will go to blazes of itself. We, on the contrary, say: Do away with capital, the concentration of all means of production in the hands of the few, and the state will fall of itself. The difference is an essential one: Without a previous social revolution the abolition of the state is nonsense; the abolition of capital is precisely the social revolution and involves a change in the whole mode of production. Now then, inasmuch as to Bakunin the state is the main evil, nothing must be done which can maintain the existence of the state, that is, of any state, whether it be a republic, a monarchy or anything else. Hence complete abstention from all politics. To commit a political act, and especially to take part in an election, would be a betrayel of principle. The thing to do is to carry on propaganda, heap abuse upon the state; organise, and when ALL the workers are won over, that is, the majority, depose the authorities, abolish the state and replace it by the organisation of the International. This great act, with which the millennium begins, is called social liquidation.
All this sounds extremely radical, and is so simple that it can be learnt by heart in five minutes; that is why this theory of Bakunin's has speedily found favor in Italy and Spain among young lawyers, doctors and other doctrinaires. But the mass of workers will never allow itself to be persuaded that the public affairs of their own countries are not also their own affairs, they are by nature political and whoever tries to make out to them that they should leave politics alone will in the end be left alone. To preach to the workers that they should in all circumstances abstain from politics is to drive them into the arms of the priests or the bourgeois republicans.
Now, as the International, according to Bakunin, was not formed for political struggle but in order that it may at once replace the old state organisation as soon as social liquidation takes place, it follows that it must come as near as possible to the Bakuninist ideal of the society of the future. In this society there will above all be no authority, for authority=state=an absolute evil. (Indeed, how these people propose to run a factory, operate a railway or steer a ship without having in the last resort one deciding will, without single management, they of course do not tell us.) The authority of the majority over the minority also ceases. Every individual and every community is autonomous; but as to how a society, even of only two people, is possible unless each gives up some of his autonomy, Bakunin only maintains silence." unauthored from net