A Marxist critique of Bakunin

With the advent of "anti-globalization" protests, a very old movement 
seems to be picking up steam once again. This seems to have something 
to do with fashion, according to an article that appeared in the 
Style section of the April 4, 2000 Washington Post:

--- 
"Is this the Anarchist Soccer League?" asks the girl with the pierced 
lip and eyebrow. She catches the eye of a guy whose black T-shirt 
identifies him as "Poor, Ugly, Happy." 

He informs her that, yes, this is the regular pickup game of the 
Anarchist Soccer League, held on Sunday afternoons amid the 
minivan-and-merlot enclaves of upper Northwest Washington. 

She surveys the dusty field near Woodrow Wilson High School, where 30 
players have amassed to kick a ball around to promote physical 
fitness, camaraderie and the defeat of global capitalism. They're 
mainly college-age men and women--energetic, fairly decent players. 
They know how to cross and dribble. They wear cleats and shin guards. 
"It looks too organized to be the Anarchist Soccer League," the 
pierced girl says dismissively. She adjusts the black bra under her 
white tank top, wondering whether to join in. 

"I need a cigarette," she decides, and roller-blades off to find one. 

But soon she'll return to get into the game. She's a punk rocker, a 
supporter of an activist group called Refuse & Resist. She wants to 
free Mumia Abu-Jamal, the convicted cop killer. 

Her name is Barucha Peller. She wears Abercrombie & Fitch pants and 
carries a Nine West wallet. She's not entirely sure that she's an 
anarchist--"I'm 17, too young to pick any ideology"--but she 
definitely doesn't like The System. 

It's a sunny afternoon. So, sure, she'll play some soccer. 
---

One might legitimately question whether this will generate any 
long-term commitment to revolutionary politics. According to veteran 
left activist Walt Sheasby, a 1970 news source reported that there 
were an estimated 2 million U.S. citizens who considered themselves 
"revolutionary." As an SDS organizer, Sheasby witnessed chapters 
springing up overnight like mushrooms. Many of these young 
radicals--Ms. Peller's forerunners--were also resistant to ideology. 
He confesses that, "In various political activities over the last 
three decades, I've met hardly a handful of those I knew in the 
sixties. I'm willing to bet other organizers would tell the same 
tale. It's as if these 'revolutionaries' never lived."

(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marxist/message/5513)

Whether the revival of anarchism will turn out to more than just a 
passing fad is too soon to say. For Marxists, however, its 
reappearance presents something of a challenge. For Barbara Epstein, 
writing in the Marxist Monthly Review, it is not only a shot in the 
arm for the left, but offers the possibility of a kind of arranged 
marriage between the red and the black down the road.

--- 
"Actually existing" anarchism has changed and so has "actually 
existing" Marxism. Marxists who participated in the movements of the 
sixties tend to have a sharper appreciation of the importance of 
social and cultural equality, and of living according to our values 
in the present, than did many members of previous generations of 
Marxist activists. If a new paradigm of the left emerges from the 
struggle against neoliberalism and the transnational corporate order, 
it is likely to include elements of anarchist sensibility as well as 
of Marxist analysis. 
---

All of this suggests that the marriage will combine Marxist brains 
and anarchist heart. It is entirely possible that the anarchist 
targets of Professor Epstein's affections might spurn these advances. 
Indeed, based on my encounters with anarchists on the Internet, I am 
left with the impression that not only do they have their own 
analysis regarded as vastly superior to Marxism, but are not bashful 
about saying so.

This article is the first in a series that will try to come to terms 
with anarchist ideology. The chief purpose is not to change anarchist 
minds. After all, if a movement has maintained an existence for over 
150 years without any tangible victories, one might have to ask 
whether something other than rational expectations or practical 
politics keeps it afloat. We instead intend to help clarify the 
thinking of people like the good Professor Epstein, so that the 
prospects of an arranged marriage might be less risky for either 
party. When this kind of intimacy is involved, one should minimize 
risks.

For many reasons, Bakunin is a good place to start in such an 
investigation. Not only is he a founding father of anarchism, his 
career developed partly as a series of ideological and organizational 
challenges to Marx.

Marx and Bakunin both emerge out of the radical wing of the Hegelian 
School of philosophy. Since most of Europe in this period was 
struggling to overcome the dead weight of feudal economic and social 
institutions, Hegel's appeal is easily understandable. His dictum 
that "All that is rational is real and all that is real is rational" 
was not only a succinct statement of the Enlightenment, his entire 
philosophy revolved around the notion of an uneven and dialectical 
process toward a more progressive society and politics.

A breach opened up between the Young Hegelians and their tutor over 
his belief that such progress was identifiable with the Prussian 
state. In many ways, Hegel's tendency to idealize the Kaiser's regime 
is reminiscent of the efforts of a modern version of Hegelianism, 
namely Francis Fukuyama's "End of History," which apotheosizes the 
modern liberal imperialist state.

In the early 1840s, as both Marx and Bakunin were struggling to 
transcend the Hegelian framework, they made contact with socialist 
and communist circles led by thinkers such as Moses Hess, Wilhelm 
Weitling and P.J. Proudhon. What unites these early thinkers is their 
tendency to see the struggle for a classless society in moral or 
philosophical terms. They hoped to lead European society to a better 
future through a kind of prophetic denunciation of contemporary ills. 
Proudhon's notion that "property is theft" epitomizes this approach.

Marx eventually came to the conclusion that a critique of capitalism 
had to be rooted in political economy rather than ethics. Written in 
1846-47, "The Poverty of Philosophy" is not only an answer to 
Proudhon's "Property is Theft," it also contains some of the basic 
economic insights that would be more fully developed in Capital.

Lacking an analysis of the laws of capitalist accumulation, any 
attempt to develop a new revolutionary movement would be open to the 
inconsistencies and moralizing that characterize Proudhon's 
socialism, Bakunin included.

First and foremost, Bakunin's ideology is Hegelianism in reverse. 
Where Hegel tends to put a plus on German politics and society, 
Bakunin puts a minus. Instead of looking to the Prussian Junkers 
state as the embodiment of the impulse to freedom and 
self-actualization, Bakunin looks to another nationality to lead 
humanity forward, namely the Slavs.

Although you can find this theme throughout Bakunin's writings, its 
most concentrated form appears in "Statism and Anarchy," an 
uncompleted book representing his most mature thinking, to put it 
generously. On nearly every page, you find stereotypes about Germans 
and Slavs. The former have "a passion for state order and state 
discipline" because of "German blood, German instinct, and German 
tradition," while the latter "lack this passion." (Statism and 
Anarchy, p. 45) Furthermore, as if referring to a thoroughbred horse, 
Bakunin refers to Czech peasants as representing "one of the most 
splendid Slavic types." "Hussite blood flows in their veins, the hot 
blood of the Taborites, and the memory of Zizka lives within them." 
Since the Hussite rebellion took place in the 15th century, the 
Czechs must have a very long memory.

Lacking even the rudiments of an understanding of the contradictions 
of the capitalist system, Bakunin can of course not detect changes 
taking place beneath the surface. There is virtually no attempt to 
analyze German society as a product of class contradictions. Bakunin 
regards the workers "as confused by their leaders--politicians, 
literati and Jews," even though, as he admits, "scarcely a month or a 
week goes by without a street disturbance or sometimes even a clash 
with the police in some German city." Bakunin can scarcely keep his 
frustration under wraps as he rails at working class willingness to 
vote for socialists rather than just going out and making a 
gosh-darned revolution. If he Bakunin understands how evil the system 
is, why can't they? While reformism was certainly a problem in the 
German social democracy, one might doubt whether Bakunin's petulant 
outbursts would have had much affect. Mostly what they boil down to 
is an appeal to workers to abandon their trade unions and parties, an 
appeal heard from the ruling class that was mixed with a generous 
dose of repression.

Bakunin's fixation with "blood" and "instinct" appears elsewhere. You 
can frequently detect an element of 19th century social Darwinism, 
even though Bakunin tends not to cite anybody like Herbert Spencer. 
In the most bizarre expression of this, he tries to explain 
patriotism as being rooted in biology:

"Those who are in agriculture or gardening know the costs of 
preserving their plants from the invasion of the parasitic species 
that join battle with them over the light and the chemical elements 
of the earth, without which they cannot survive. The strongest plant, 
which is best adapted to the particular conditions of climate and 
soil and which still develops with relative vigor naturally tends to 
stifle all others. It is a silent struggle, but one without truce. 
And the whole force of human intervention is required to protect the 
preferred plants against this deadly invasion.

"In the animal world the same struggle recurs, only with more 
dramatic commotion and noise. The extinction is no longer silent and 
insensitive. Blood flows; the devoured, tortured animal fills the air 
with its cries of distress. Man, the animal, that can speak, finally 
utters the first word in this struggle, and that word is patriotism." 
(Open Letters to Swiss Comrades, 1869-1871)

Of course, this is complete nonsense. If anything, patriotism is a 
relatively recent phenomenon in human history, very much associated 
with the rise of the nation-state. Since Bakunin lacks an analysis of 
the origin of the state, it should come as no surprise that he 
confuses it with the garden.

One would be at a loss to determine where Bakunin came up with such 
hare-brained notions. Since there are never any scholarly citations 
in his work, one must assume that he was simply reflecting 
commonplace ideas floating around in the European middle-class of his 
age. One imagines that he was too busy fomenting insurrections to 
find time to go to a library. Then again, perhaps Bakunin would have 
not gotten much use out of a library given anti-intellectual 
prejudices such as these:

"By contrast to all metaphysicians, positivists, and scholarly or 
unscholarly worshippers of the goddess science, we maintain that 
natural and social life always precedes thought (which is merely one 
of its functions) but is never its result. Life develops out of its 
own inexhaustible depths by means of a succession of diverse facts, 
not a succession of abstract reflections; the latter, always produced 
by life but never producing it, like milestones merely indicate its 
direction and the different phases of its spontaneous and 
self-generated development." (Statism and Anarchy, p. 135)

Allowing that this formula has a certain kind of raffish 1960s charm, 
it is practically useless as a guide for the intelligent pursuit of 
science. To state that social life precedes thought is a truism. But 
how exactly do we develop a method that can make sense out of the 
natural world and society? That is the real question. By all evidence 
of Bakunin's work, there is no indication that such a method was of 
any interest to him. Rather you find vulgar opinionating worthless to 
anybody trying to make sense of European society of the mid 19th 
century, let alone the world we live in today.

One of the key differences between Bakunin and Marx is over what we 
might call "agency," a term designating the social class capable of 
transforming society through revolutionary action. Despite the fact 
that the industrial proletariat had not achieved the sort of 
numerical strength and social power that it would later in the 
century, Marx staked everything on this emerging class. The reasons 
for this are developed extensively throughout his writings, but 
suffice it to say at this point that it is related to his analysis of 
the capitalist economy. Since the capitalist system can only survive 
through competition and revolutionizing the means of production, it 
would of necessity introduce machinery and--hence--a proletariat. In 
struggles over wages and working conditions--as well as a host of 
ancillary issues--the two classes will confront each other in 
revolutionary battles for power. While the post-WWII era left much of 
this in doubt, we are witnessing a return to the 'classic' norms of 
the 19th century, as modern capitalism does everything in its power 
to destroy the welfare state and the trade unions.

Although Bakunin was no friend of the bourgeoisie, he never seemed to 
be able to make up his mind on the 'agency' question. Addressing 
Marx's belief that the proletariat be "raised to the level of a 
ruling class," Bakunin pointed out that some other class, like the 
"peasant rabble," might end up under the working class boot. This 
concern is obviously related to Bakunin's preference for the 
warmhearted Slavic peasant over the anal-retentive, 
authority-worshipping German worker: "If we look at the question from 
the national point of view, then, presumably, as far as the Germans 
are concerned it is the Slavs who…will occupy in regard to the 
victorious German proletariat that the latter now occupies in 
relation to its own bourgeoisie." Absent from Bakunin's discussion is 
the economic and social weight of the working class, which could 
counter that of the ruling class. Furthermore, the peasant was far 
too differentiated socially to rule in its own name. Lacking any 
specific analysis of the agrarian question, Bakunin was content to 
dwell in fantasies about the uncorrupted peasant. (Statism and 
Anarchy, p. 177)

In what might be described as a bet-hedging strategy, Bakunin was not 
above making appeals to the royalty to carry out his program. In 1862 
Bakunin wrote "The People's Cause: Romanov, Pugachev, or Pestel." The 
three figures respectively stood for various social layers: Romanov 
the aristocracy, Pugachev the peasant firebrand and Pestel the 
privileged intelligentsia. Romanov was best qualified to lead the 
revolution:

"We should most gladly of all follow Romanov, if Romanov could and 
would transform himself from a Petersburg Emperor into a National 
Tsar. We should gladly enroll under his standard because the Russian 
people still recognizes him and because his strength is concentrated, 
ready to act, and might become an irresistible strength if only he 
would give it a popular baptism. We would follow him because he alone 
could carry out and complete a great, peaceful revolution without 
shedding one drop of Russian or Slav blood."

After Bakunin was imprisoned in 1851, he wrote a "Confession" to Czar 
Nicholas I. This self-debasing document was not wrested out of 
torture, but was a ploy to win early release through flattery. It 
contains page after page of the most embarrassing kind of toadying up 
to the Russian despot, among which you can find appeals for a 
"revolution from above" of the kind suggested in the 1862 pamphlet, 
when Bakunin was enjoying freedom. In the Confessions, we find the 
following sort of thing:

"A strange thought was then born within me. I suddenly took it into 
my head to write to you, Sire, and was on the point of starting the 
letter. It too contained a sort of confession, more vain, more 
high-flown than the one I am now writing--I was then at liberty and 
had not yet learned from experience--but it was quite sincere and 
heartfelt: I confessed my sins; I prayed for forgiveness; then, 
having made a rather drawn-out and pompous review of the current 
situation of the Slav peoples, I implored you, Sire, in the name of 
all oppressed Slavs, to come to their aid, to take them under your 
mighty protection, to be their savior, their father, and, having 
proclaimed yourself Tsar of all the Slavs, finally to raise the Slav 
banner in eastern Europe to the terror of the Germans and all other 
oppressors and enemies of the Slav race!"

We should hasten to add that this is the same Czar who made Russia a 
living hell for peasant and Jews alike. According to Cecil Roth, of 
the legal enactments concerning the Jews published in Russia from 
1649 to 1881, no less than one half, or six hundred in all, belong to 
Nicholas the First's reign. Roth writes:

"By the Statute Concerning the Jews of 1835, the Pale of Settlement 
was yet further narrowed down. Jews were excluded from all villages 
within fifty versts of the western frontier. Synagogues were 
forbidden to be erected in the vicinity of Churches, a strict 
censorship was established over all Hebrew books. Later, the Jews 
were expelled from the towns as well as the villages of the frontier 
area. Special taxation was imposed on meat killed according to the 
Jewish fashion, and even on the candles kindled on Friday night." 
(History of the Jews)

It is entirely likely that Bakunin's anti-Semitism prevented him from 
worrying much over such matters. If this is the case, we can 
certainly explain it as a function of his social roots in the Russian 
gentry. Whether this makes him an appropriate symbol of the 
unquenchable struggle for freedom and social justice is another 
question altogether. Whatever else one might think about 19th century 
Enlightenment values in this postmodernist age, the commitment to the 
emancipation of the Jews was laudable. It is unfortunate that 
Bakunin's revolt against Hegel allowed him to embrace 
anti-Enlightenment prejudices of the worst sort.

If appeals to the Czar went unheeded, there were always tightly knit 
and highly secretive conspiratorial circles that could be relied on. 
Such pure expressions of the anarchist spirit would be immune to the 
blandishments of bourgeois society. This revolutionary priesthood 
understands the tasks of the oppressed far better than they ever 
could themselves:

"This revolutionary alliance excludes any idea of dictatorship and of 
controlling and directive power. It is, however, necessary for the 
establishment of this revolutionary alliance and for the Triumph of 
the Revolution over reaction that the unity of ideas of revolutionary 
action find an organ in the midst of popular anarchy which will be 
the life and the energy of the Revolution. This organ should be the 
secret and universal association of the International Brothers.

"This association has its origin in the conviction that revolutions 
are never made by individuals or even by secret societies. They make 
themselves; they are produced by the force of circumstances, the 
movement of facts and events. They receive a long preparation in the 
deep, instinctive consciousness of the masses, then they burst forth, 
often seemingly triggered by trivial causes. All that a 
well-organized society can do is, first, to assist at the birth of a 
revolution by spreading among the masses ideas which give expression 
to their instincts, and to organize, not the army of the 
Revolution-the people alone should always be that army-but a sort of 
revolutionary general staff, composed of dedicated, energetic, 
intelligent individuals, sincere friends of the people above all, men 
neither vain nor ambitious, but capable of serving as intermediaries 
between the revolutionary idea and the instincts of the people."

"There need not be a great number of these men. One hundred 
revolutionaries, strongly and earnestly allied, would suffice for the 
international organization of all of Europe. Two or three hundred 
revolutionaries will be enough for the organization of the largest 
country." ("The Program of the International Brotherhood", 1869)

Even the worst caricature of Leninist vanguard would pale in 
comparison to this kind of elitism. Nowhere is there the slightest 
awareness in Bakunin of the need for a working class revolutionary 
leadership to emerge from its participation in the mass movement. In 
a revolutionary situation, workers will not rally to people who have 
been sitting around in the sewers hatching conspiracies by 
candlelight. They will gravitate to the men and women who have risked 
jail and beatings to win reforms that make a difference in their 
day-to-day lives.

For all of the misunderstandings about the Leninist concept of a 
vanguard, it is useful to refer to "What is to be Done" for 
clarification:

"Why is there not a single political event in Germany that does not 
add to the authority and prestige of the Social-Democracy? Because 
Social-Democracy is always found to be in advance of all the others 
in furnishing the most revolutionary appraisal of every given event 
and in championing every protest against tyranny...It intervenes in 
every sphere and in every question of social and political life; in 
the matter of Wilhelm's refusal to endorse a bourgeois progressive as 
city mayor (our Economists have not managed to educate the Germans to 
the understanding that such an act is, in fact, a compromise with 
liberalism!); in the matter of the law against 'obscene' publications 
and pictures; in the matter of governmental influence on the election 
of professors, etc., etc."

Despite the tendency of some modern anarchists to claim that they are 
following the Zapatistas' footsteps, there is powerful evidence that 
this movement has much more in common with Lenin's concept than the 
small conspiratorial circles favored by Bakunin. In many respects, 
their descent on Mexico City in March 2001, culminating in one of the 
largest "anti-globalizations" actions to date, was designed to win 
support for legislation that would improve the material, cultural and 
political conditions of Mayan Indians. In an article in the March 25, 
Los Angeles Times on March 25, Subcommandante Marcos is reported to 
have "slammed the failures of revolutionary movements of past decades 
for not standing up for the rights of indigenous peoples and other 
disenfranchised groups, including homosexuals." In reality, this has 
been the task of the socialist movement from the days of Marx and 
Lenin. If particular socialist groups have been inattentive to these 
sorts of issues, it is to be blamed on "What is to be Done," which 
calls for involvement in "every sphere and in every question of 
social and political life."

In reality, the biggest question dividing anarchists and Marxists is 
not the theory of the state. It is rather the value of political 
action, including action designed to win reforms of the kind that 
would improve the lives of Mayan Indians, for example.

If you turn to August Nimtz's Summer 1999 article in Science and 
Society titled "Marx and Engels--Unsung Heroes of the Democratic 
Breakthrough," you will discover how engaged they were in struggles 
against despotism. Rather than philosophizing about future utopias, 
they committed themselves to fighting alongside working class 
organizations on the front lines. While the goal of these 
organizations was to replace feudal absolutism with political 
democracy, the logic of the struggle was toward social and economic 
democracy as well. This was the original meaning of democracy: rule 
by the people (demos).

As I have pointed out, they did not start out with this outlook. In 
the early 1840s, they gravitated to socialist circles that held 
disdain for political action. What changed them? It was the Chartist 
movement in Great Britain that taught them the need for political 
struggles by the working class. While the fight for the ballot was 
crucial, Engels emphasized in "Conditions of the Working Class in 
England" that political democracy was not an end in itself, but a 
means for social equality. He writes, "Therein lies the difference 
between Chartist democracy and all previous political bourgeois 
democracy."

While Marx and Engels would eventually call for the revolutionary 
overthrow of the capitalist system, they never abandoned the idea 
that the communists should constitute the most "advanced" or "extreme 
wing" of the "democratic party" as they put it.

In the first wave of revolutions that swept Europe in 1848, Marx and 
Engels discovered that although democratic rights were in the 
interest of all classes arrayed against the feudal gentry and clergy, 
the only class that would fight resolutely was the working class. In 
Germany, the middle-class radical democrats lost their nerve in the 
fight against absolutism. This led Marx to theorize a "permanent 
revolution" which would combine democratic and socialist goals led by 
the workers.

After the suppression of the 1848 revolutions, a decade-long lull set 
in. What gave Marx and Engels encouragement was the emancipation of 
serfs in the Russia and John Brown's uprising against slavery in the 
USA. They saw these events as precursors of "a new era of revolution" 
which had opened up in 1863. The revival of a democratic movement 
would surely lead to an upsurge in the working class movement, as 
Marx indicated in a letter to Lincoln in 1864 on behalf of the 
International Working Man's Association (IMWA): "The working men of 
Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated 
a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so would the American 
Anti-Slavery War will do for the working classes."

In 1870, a big struggle opened up in the IMWA over Marx's proposal 
that two goals set the strategic agenda of the organization: "To 
conquer political power has…become the great duty of the working 
classes" and "the emancipation of the working classes must be 
conquered by the working class themselves." In other words, the 
original inspiration from the Chartist movement lived on. His two 
main opponents were British trade union bureaucrats, who while giving 
lip service to the idea of working class independent politics, were 
aligned with the Liberal Party. The other was Bakunin.

(This article was intended to be the first in a series on anarchism. 
Because of the political upheavals taking place around the September 
11th events, the issues that generated this article have been 
superseded for the foreseeable future. I may return to them in the 
future as dictated by political exigencies.)


-- 
Louis Proyect, lnp3@panix.com on 09/23/2001

Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org