Michael Bakunin

“ It was at this time that Michael Bakunin, from his exile in Switzerland, conspired with Nechaiev to bring about a great uprising of the peasants, through the Society for the Liberation of the People. Bakunin advised the students to leave the universities and to go among the people to teach them and, at the same time, arouse them to revolt. It was at this time, too, that Nicholas Tchaykovsky and his friends, the famous Circle of Tchaykovsky, began to distribute among students in all parts of the Empire books dealing with the condition of the peasants and proposing remedies therefor. ”

“ Perhaps that is why an American revolutionist can at the same time be a politician. That is also the reason why leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World continue in the Socialist party, which is antagonistic to the principles as well as to the activities of the I. W. W. Also why a rigid Marxian may propose that the Anarchists work together with the faction that began its career by a most bitter and malicious persecution of one of the pioneers of Anarchism, Michael Bakunin. ”

“ The questions discussed in it are treated decisively and with a singular vigor of logic. Rightly addressing himself only to his honest opponents, Bakunin demonstrates to them the emptiness of their belief in that divine authority on which all temporal authorities are founded; he proves to them the purely human genesis of all governments; finally, without stopping to discuss those bases of the State already condemned by public morality, such as physical superiority, violence, nobility, wealth, he does justice to the theory which would entrust science with the government of societies. ”

“ It is quite likely that it would never have succeeded in getting out of the rag, if the other; divinity which was not allowed to fall into matter and which is kept in a state of pure spirit in the sublime heights of the absolute ideal, or in the celestial regions, had not had pity on it. ”

“ I, on the contrary, have no faith in the old revolutionary methods, and I labor to understand the march of man in the past and in the present, in order to learn how to march with him, without lagging behind, and without going as much in advance as you, for men would not and could not follow me. It is impossible to give an exhaustive account of all the destructive projects of Bakunin, but among the objects of his iconoclastic fury were God, public or private worship, marriage, inheritance, and individual property. ”

“ Science is unchangeable, impersonal, general, abstract, insensible, like the laws of which it is but the ideal reproduction, reflected or mental - that is cerebral (using this word to remind us that science itself is but a material product of a material organ, the brain) . Life is wholly fugitive and temporary, but also wholly palpitating with reality and individuality, sensibility, sufferings, joys, aspirations, needs, and passions. It alone spontaneously creates real things and; beings. Science creates nothing; it establishes and recognises only the creations of life. ”

“ See in how profound an error our dear and illustrious idealists find themselves. In talking to us of God they purpose, they desire, to elevate us, emancipate us, ennoble us, and, on the contrary, they crush and degrade us. With the name of God they imagine that they can establish fraternity among men, and, on the contrary, they create pride, contempt; they sow discord, hatred, war; they establish slavery. For with God come the different degrees of divine inspiration; humanity is divided into men highly inspired, less inspired, uninspired. All are equally insignificant before God, it is true ”

“ This contradiction lies here: they wish God, and they wish humanity. They persist in connecting two terms which, once separated, can come together again only to destroy each other. They say in a single breath: "God and the liberty of man," "God and the dignity, justice, equality, fraternity, prosperity of men" - regardless of the fatal logic by virtue of which, if God exists, all these things are condemned to non-existence. For, if God is, he is necessarily the eternal, supreme, absolute master, and, if such a master exists, man is a slave ”

“ If God entire could find lodgment in each man, then each man would be God. We should have an immense quantity of Gods, each limited by all the others and yet none the less infinite - a contradiction which would imply a mutual destruction of men, an impossibility of the existence of more than one. As for the particles, that is another matter; nothing more rational, indeed, than that one particle should be limited by another and be smaller than the whole. ”

“ Nothing can be clearer or more frank and comprehensive in its destructiveness than the revolutionary anarchism of Bakunin. He rejects all the ideal systems in every name and shape, from the idea of God downwards ”

“ The general idea is always an abstraction and, for that very reason, in some sort a negation of real life. I have stated in the Appendix that human thought and, in consequence of this, science can grasp and name only the general significance of real facts, their relations, their laws - in short, that which is permanent in their continual transformations - but never their material, individual side, palpitating, so to speak, with reality and life, and therefore fugitive and intangible. Science comprehends the thought of the reality, not reality itself ”

“ This seems harmless, but it is not so at all, and the very precise, very narrow and very barren doctrine hidden under the intangible vagueness of these poetic forms leads to the same disastrous results that all the positive religions lead to - namely, the most complete negation of human liberty and dignity.
To proclaim as divine all that is grand, just, noble, and beautiful in humanity is to tacitly admit that humanity of itself would have been unable to produce it - that is, that, abandoned to itself, its own nature is miserable, iniquitous, base, and ugly. ”

“ Unless, then, we desire the enslavement and degradation of mankind, as the Jesuits desire it, as the mômiers, pietists, or Protestant Methodists desire it, we may not, must not make the slightest concession either to the God of theology or to the God of metaphysics. He who, in this mystical alphabet, begins with A will inevitably end with Z; he who desires to worship God must harbor no childish illusions about the matter, but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity.
If God is, man is a slave; now, man can and must be free ”

“ The voice that had entranced mass-meetings in a hundred cities of southern and western Europe was stifled in the catacombs of Schlüsselburg.
But Time, the All-Avenger, has made the martyr’s name a rallying cry of East-European reformers, and America should honor the memory of Mikal Bakunin as that of a hero and pioneer of reform—a man whose marvelous gift of intuition had recognized all the ideals of Populism, all its principles and promises, but who succumbed to the superhuman task of effecting its progress under the handicap of a monarchical government. ”

“ The compromising positivists are wiser than the logical positivists; the former are the wise men, the theorists par excellence, and are therefore the leading representatives of the present. Bakunin characterises them by quoting a well—known dictum concerning the juste-milieu: "Le côté gauche dit, 'deux fois deux font quatre'; le côté droit dit, 'deux fois deux font six'; le juste-milieu dit, 'deux fois deux font cinq.'" The compromisers speak less clearly and definitely than the logical positivists; they evade the simple practical urge for truth ”

“ On the other hand, it is certain that no man has ever seen or can see pure mind, detached from all material form existing separately from any animal body whatsoever. But if no person has seen it, how is it that men have come to believe in its existence? The fact of this belief is certain and if not universal, as all the idealists pretend, at least very general, and as such it is entirely worthy of our closest attention, for a general belief, however foolish it may be, exercises too potent a sway over the destiny of men to warrant us in ignoring it or putting it aside. ”

“ I do not think that society ought to maltreat men of genius as it has done hitherto; but neither do I think it should indulge them too far, still less accord them any privileges or exclusive rights whatsoever; and that for three reasons: first, because it would often mistake a charlatan for a man of genius; second, because, through such a system of privileges, it might transform into a charlatan even a real man of genius, demoralize him, and degrade him ”

“ Science knows all these things, but it does not and cannot go beyond them. Abstraction being its very nature, it can well enough conceive the principle of real and living individuality, but it can have no dealings with real and living individuals; it concerns itself with individuals in general, but not with Peter or James, not with such or such a one, who, so far as it is concerned, do not, cannot, have any existence. Its individuals, I repeat, are only abstractions. ”

“ While Herzen had been ripening in political wisdom under the ampler intellectual life to which his exile introduced him, Bakunin's twelve years' confinement had maddened him into a fanatic, and instead of curing him of revolutionary propensities, only fixed the idea of revolution in his mind like a mania. When he came to London a huge, haggard man, always excited, always talking, he used to speak of himself as a Prometheus unbound, and he was to live henceforth for the undoing of the powers and systems that were. ”

“ Bakunin admits that the positive and the negative are equally justified when the latter, quiescently and egoistically withdrawing into itself, is untrue to itself. But the negative must not be egoistic; it must lovingly give itself up to the positive in order to absorb the positive. With growing enthusiasm Bakunin sociomorphises the logical contrast between the positive and the negative. In his relentless negation the negative appears simultaneously as that which is common to the two terms of the contrast, and as the superposed, the superior, the solely justified term ”

“ According to Bakunin, subjectivism leads to despair and self—destruction. "Reality is ever victorious; man has no choice but to come to terms with reality, to immerse himself deliberately in reality, and to love reality, for in default of this he must destroy himself." This anti-subjectivist formula of Bakunin is very different from the formula of Bělinskii and Herzen, for whereas the two latter discern in subjectivism the premisses for crime, murder, and revolution, Bakunin discovers the premisses for suicide. ”

“ Bakunin’s methods of realizing his revolutionary programme are not less frank and destructive than his principles. The revolutionist, as he would recommend him to be, is a consecrated man, who will allow no private interests or feelings, and no scruples of religion, patriotism, or morality, to turn him aside from his mission, the aim of which is by all available means to overturn the existing society. His work is merciless and universal destruction. The future organization will doubtless proceed out of the movement and life of the people, but it is the concern of coming generations. ”

“ In the first place, science is not: it is becoming. The learned man of to-day is but the know-nothing of to-morrow. Let him once imagine that he has reached the end, and for that very reason he sinks beneath even the babe just born. But, could he recognize truth in its essence, he can only corrupt himself by privilege and corrupt others by power. To establish his government, he must try, like all chiefs of State, to arrest the life of the masses moving below him, keep them in ignorance in order to preserve quiet, and gradually debase them that he may rule them from a loftier throne. ”

“ The latter have taken advantage of the ignorance of the masses to sacrifice them with delight to their abstractions, which by the way, are always very lucrative to those who represent them in flesh and bone. Positive science, recognizing its absolute inability to conceive real individuals and interest itself in their lot, must definitely and absolutely renounce all claim to the government of societies; for if it should meddle therein, it would only sacrifice continually the living men whom it ignores to the abstractions which constitute the sole object of its legitimate preoccupations. ”

“ Our aim is to raze things to the ground; our goal, pandestruction. "It seems to us criminal that those who are already busied about the practical work of revolution should trouble their minds with thoughts of this nebulous future, for such thoughts will merely prove a hindrance to the supreme cause of destruction." Bakunin rails against the literature of the day, composed by informers and flatterers, by those in the pay of despotism, who write belletristic and scientific works in defence of the old order, and who have thought out this lie concerning the positive plan for the future. ”

“ At the successive congresses its socialistic tendencies became more and more pronounced; it declared its opposition to private property not only in railways but in mines and the soil, holding that these should revert to the community. Even the principle of inheritance was saved only by a narrow majority. In 1869 M. Bakunin, the Russian socialist or nihilist, with his party joined the association, and at once asserted his character as the “apostle of universal destruction.” ”

“ Who are the real idealists - the idealists not of abstraction, but of life, not of heaven, but of earth - and who are the materialists?
It is evident that the essential condition of theoretical or divine idealism is the sacrifice of logic, of human reason, the renunciation of science. We see, further, that in defending the doctrines of idealism one finds himself enlisted perforce in the ranks of the oppressors and exploiters of the masses. These are two great reasons which, it would seem, should be sufficient to drive every great mind, every great heart, from idealism. ”