Bakunin (ta-da)

[Holden Caulfield]

(disclaimer: this is no way is me trying to annoy RP or anything along these lines, i hope he is fine with me moving this quote into this thread, i would like to see some anarchist response)


He condemned Marx for arguing that the working class should seize state power at the same time he called for a "secret dictatorship" ruled by "invisible dictators" after the revolution. This "secret dictatorship", exercised in the name of libertarianism of course (:rolleyes:) became the basis of his attempts to take over the First International from 1869 until he was justifiably expelled from the organization. So yes, he was indeed full of shit.

thoughts?

[Kropotesta]

(disclaimer: this is no way is me trying to annoy RP or anything along these lines, i hope he is fine with me moving this quote into this thread, i would like to see some anarchist response)



thoughts?
when Marxists use Bakunins phrase of the "Invisible Dictatorship" they take it completely out of context. even a quick to trip to the Anarchist FAQ would clear that little mistake up.

[Forward Union]

when Marxists use Bakunins phrase of the "Invisible Dictatorship" they take it completely out of context. even a quick to trip to the Anarchist FAQ would clear that little mistake up.

Really? shall we hear what bakunin had to say?


"[t]here is only one power and one dictatorship whose organisation is salutary and feasible: it is that collective, invisible dictatorship of those who are allied in the name of our principle (...) this dictatorship will be all the more salutary and effective for not being dressed up in any official power or extrinsic character"

He also later wrote in a letter to "Sergei Nechaev"


"We are the most pronounced enemies of every sort of official power -- even if it is an ultra-revolutionary power. We are the enemies of any sort of publicly declared dictatorship, we are social revolutionary anarchists. But, you will ask, if we are anarchists, by what right do we want to influence the people, and what methods will we use? Denouncing all power, with what sort of power, or rather by what sort of force, shall we direct a people's revolution? By a force that is invisible, that no one admits and that is not imposed on anyone, by the collective dictatorship of our organization which will be all the greater the more it remains unseen and undeclared, the more it is deprived of all official rights and significance."

He later fought in Bohemia (funded by the government in paris) saying he wanted a “government with unlimited dictatorial power [in which] “all will be subjugated to a single dictatorial authority”
later adding



"The revolutionary government with unlimited dictatorial power must sit in Prague … All clubs and journals, all manifestations of garrulous anarchism, will also be destroyed, and all will be subjugated to a single dictatorial authority”

...

[Kropotesta]

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1931/secJ3.html#secj37
look for the part titled
J.3.7 Doesn't Bakunin's "Invisible Dictatorship" prove that anarchists are secret authoritarians?
on that page. It should clear up that miss understanding.

[Forward Union]

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1931/secJ3.html#secj37
look for the part titled
J.3.7 Doesn't Bakunin's "Invisible Dictatorship" prove that anarchists are secret authoritarians?
on that page. It should clear up that miss understanding.

I've read it before and it just doesn't hold up. It makes a logical jump. It says;

1) Anarchists oppose centralised power (which is true)

2) That Bakunin was an Anarchist,

3) therefore Bukunin opposed centralised power...

But the problem is that he clearly didn't oppose centralised power.

You can't just clear his name by association. In the same way you cant accuse all anarchists of wanting a dictatorship because one of them lost his conkers and said he did. Notice, no one here has said that the anarchist movement has struggled for a shadow dictatorship, because it hasn't. Bakunins ideas on this issue have been discareded by the contemporary anarchist movement, and rightly so.

Attacks on Bakunin and things he wrote are not attacks on Anarchism in general. Prticularly not in instances where what he wrote was bullshit.

[Kropotesta]

I've read it before and it just doesn't hold up. It makes a logical jump. It says;

1) Anarchists oppose centralised power (which is true)

2) That Bakunin was an Anarchist,

3) therefore Bukunin opposed centralised power...

But the problem is that he clearly didn't oppose centralised power.

You can't just clear his name by association. In the same way you cant accuse all anarchists of wanting a dictatorship because one of them lost his conkers and said he did. Notice, no one here has said that the anarchist movement has struggled for a shadow dictatorship, because it hasn't. Bakunins ideas on this issue have been discareded by the contemporary anarchist movement, and rightly so.

Attacks on Bakunin and things he wrote are not attacks on Anarchism in general. Prticularly not in instances where what he wrote was bullshit.
when did Bakunin advocate centralised power?

[Forward Union]

when did Bakunin advocate centralised power?

Did you not read my first post? I'll re-post the quotes for you.

"There is only one power and one dictatorship whose organisation is salutary and feasible: it is that collective, invisible dictatorship of those who are allied in the name of our principle (...) this dictatorship will be all the more salutary and effective for not being dressed up in any official power or extrinsic character"

In Bohemia he described what he was fighting for as a “government with unlimited dictatorial power [in which] “all will be subjugated to a single dictatorial authority” ... "The revolutionary government with unlimited dictatorial power must sit in Prague … All clubs and journals, all manifestations of garrulous anarchism, will also be destroyed, and all will be subjugated to a single dictatorial authority"

:)

[Kropotesta]

Did you not read my first post? I'll re-post the quotes for you.

"There is only one power and one dictatorship whose organisation is salutary and feasible: it is that collective, invisible dictatorship of those who are allied in the name of our principle (...) this dictatorship will be all the more salutary and effective for not being dressed up in any official power or extrinsic character"

I've always took that quote as the collective having complete sovereignity over itself, as In communites ruled by themselve as a collective, not as the advocation of centralisation. hmm

[Forward Union]

I've always took that quote as the collective having complete sovereignity over itself, as In communites ruled by themselve as a collective, not as the advocation of centralisation. hmm

Perhaps, In which case he picked a very strange and misleading set of words when he could have stated it much clearer. Either he wanted there to be this misunderstanding, or there is no misunderstanding.

This, on top of his other quotes which I've never seen Anarchists adress, and his actions. Lead me to believe that he was talking about a centralised dictatorship.

[Kropotesta]

Perhaps, In which case he picked a very strange and misleading set of words when he could have stated it much clearer. Either he wanted there to be this misunderstanding, or there is no misunderstanding.

it could be a critique of the Dictatorship of the Proletriat, well not a critque but more of a comparsion between the two.
Then again Bakunin was quite a stange character.

[Forward Union]

it could be a critique of the Dictatorship of the Proletriat, well not a critque but more of a comparsion between the two.
Then again Bakunin was quite a stange character.

You think he deliberatly misrepresented his ideas as a sort of parody that would only be understood by you, nearly 100 years later? Don't you think thats a bit of a tenuous defence? Isn't it easier to just admit that even the almighty bakunin spouted some right old shit? which Leninists are right to identify and criticise?

Anarchists have recognised his shortcomings for centuries. There's no need to suddenly jump to his defence on the grounds that leninists are now also criticising him. The Authorotarian left would be wrong to say that Bakunins words represent anything other than his own views in this instance. But as of yet no one on here has

(except TC, who also claimed that the " The makhnovists were planning a genocide" :lol: :lol:)

[Kropotesta]

You think he deliberatly misrepresented his ideas as a sort of parody that would only be understood by you, nearly 100 years later? Don't you think thats a bit of a tenuous defence? Isn't it easier to just admit that even the almighty bakunin spouted some right old shit? which Leninists are right to identify and criticise?

Anarchists have recognised his shortcomings for centuries. There's no need to suddenly jump to his defence on the grounds that leninists are now also criticising him. The Authorotarian left would be wrong to say that Bakunins words represent anything other than his own views in this instance. But as of yet no one on here has

(except TC, who also claimed that the " The makhnovists were planning a genocide" :lol: :lol:)
I ain't trying to defend Bakunin cos quite frankly, I don't need to, as whatever Bakunin may or may not of said don't change the actual meaning of anarchism.
I do however have a different understanding to his quote of the invisible dictatorship. But it is annoying when Leninists, Marxists or whateverists critize Bakunin personally as a way of putting anarchism down. We, I like to think, are under no illusion that our theorists are all surpreme. Also they like to side step Marx and Engels hate of Slavs and of their put downs of Jews when criticising Bakunin, and also Proudhon.

[Devrim]

I don't think that anarchists today are actually Bakuninists, which in my opinion is a positive thing:


Not the army of the revolution-the army must always be the people-but a revolutionary general staff composed of devoted energetic and intelligent individuals who are above all sincere-not vain or ambitious-friends of the people, capable of serving as intermediaries between the revolutionary idea and the popular instincts. The number of those individuals should not be therefore too large. For the international organisation throughout Europe, 100 serious and firmly united revolutionaries would be sufficient.

Marx for all his faults, and in our opinion there are many, believed in a different method. He believed not in conspiratorialism, but in workers self organisation.

In his reply he made it clear:

To assure the success of the revolution one must have 'unity of thought and action'. The members of the Internal are trying to create this unity by propaganda discussion and the public organisation of the proletariat. But all Bakunin needs is a secret organisation of 100 people. The privileged representatives of the revolutionary idea, the general staff in the background, self appointed and commanded by the permanent 'Citizen B' The fact that those who refer to Bakunin as a political mentor refer to the Leninist as 'vanguardists' is hilarious.

Devrim

[Random Precision]

this is no way is me trying to annoy RP or anything along these lines, i hope he is fine with me moving this quote into this thread

I don't mind at all, I think it's important that we get crucial issues like these into wider discussion, especially considering that this originated in the Trotskyist group.

And for the record, my criticism of Bakunin is in no way directed at anarchists in general. After all, Anarchism is by its nature a quite different beast than Marxism, it does not have one or two uniting authorities that everyone looks toward. There are/were authorities on anarchism, sure, like Proudhon, Bakunin, Malatesta, Kropotkin, Makhno, Goldman, Rocker, and so on, but an anarchist need not uphold any certain one of these people or their oeuvre, like Marxists do for Marx and Engels.