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The Editors and Board of Trustees of the Russian Review

The Legacy of BakuninAuthor(s): Paul AvrichSource: Russian Review, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Apr., 1970), pp. 129-142Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Editors and Board of Trustees of the Russian ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/127358

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The Legacyof Bakunin*By Paul Avrich

A century ago anarchism was emerging as a major force withinthe revolutionary movement, and the name of Bakunin, its foremostchampion and prophet, was as well known among the workers andradical intellectuals of Europe as that of Karl Marx, with whom hewas competing for leadership of the First International. In contrastto Marx, however, Bakunin had won his reputation chiefly as an acti-vist rather than a theorist of rebellion. He was not one to sit in libra-ries, studying and writing about predetermined revolutions. Impa-tient for action, he threw himself into the uprisings of 1848 withirrepressible xuberance,a Pronetlhcan figureeioving withi the tideof revolt from Paris to the barricades of Austria and Germany. Menlike Bakunin, a contemporary remarked, "grow in a hurricane andripen better in stormy weather than in sunshine."'Bakunin's arrest during the Dresden insurrection of 1849 cut shorthis feverish revolutionary activity. He spent the next eight years inprison, six of them in the darkest dungeons of tsarist Russia, and whenhe finally emerged, his sentence commuted to a life term in Siberianexile, he was toothless from scurvy and his health seriously impaired.In 1861, however, he escaped his warders and embarked upon a sen-sational odyssey that encircled the globe and made his name a legendand an object of worship in radical groups all over Europe.As a romantic rebel and an active force in history, Bakunin exerteda personal attraction that Marx could never rival. "Everything abouthim was colossal," recalled the composer Richard Wagner, a fellowparticipant in the Dresden uprising, "and he was full of a primitiveexuberance and strength."' Bakunin himself speaks of his own "lovefor the fantastic, for unusual, unheard-of adventures which open upvast horizons, the end of which cannot be foreseen."3 This in turn

* Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association,Washington, D. C., December 30, 1969 [Ed.].1 E. Lampert, Studies in Rebellion, London, 1957, p. 118.2 E. H. Carr, Michael Bakunin, New York, 1961, p. 196.3 Lampert, op. cit., p. 138.129


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130 The Russian Reviewinspired extravagant dreams in others, and by the time of his deathin 1876 he had won a unique place among the adventurers and mar-tyrs of the revolutionary tradition. "This man," said Alexander Her-zen of Bakunin, "was born not under an ordinary star but under acomet."4His broad magnanimity and childlike enthusiasm, his burn-ing passion for liberty and equality, his volcanic onslaughts againstprivilege and injustice-all this gave him enormous human appeal inthe libertarian circles of his day.But Bakunin, as his critics never tired of pointing out, was not asystematic thinker. Nor did he ever claim to be. For he consideredhimself a revolutionist of the deed, "not a philosopher and not aninventor of systems like Marx."'He refused to recognize the existenceof any preconceived or preordained laws of history. He rejected theview that social change depends on the gradual unfolding of "objec-tive" historical conditions. He believed, on the contrary, that menshape their own destinies, that their lives cannot be squeezed into aProcrustean bed of abstract sociological formulas. "No theory, noready-made system, no book that has ever been written will savethe world," Bakunin declared. "I cleave to no system. I am a trueseeker."6By teaching the workers theories, he said, Marxwould onlysucceed in stifling the revolutionary fervor every man already pos-sesses-"the impulse to liberty, the passion for equality, the holy in-stinct of revolt." Unlike -Marx's scientific socialism," his own social-ism, Bakunin asserted, was "purely instinctive.""Bakunin's influence, then, as Peter Kropotkin remarked, was pri-marily that of a "moral personality" rather than of an intellectualauthority.8Although he wrote prodigiously, he did not leave a singlefinished book to posterity. He was forever starting new works which,owing to his turbulent existence, were broken off in mid-course andnever completed. His literary output, in Thomas Masaryk's descrip-tion, was a "patchworkof fragments."9And yet his writings, however erratic and unmethodical, aboundin flashes of insight that illuminate some of the most important ques-

4 Eugene Pyziur, The Philosophy of Anarchism of M. A. Bakunin, Milwaukee,1955, p. 1.5 Iu. M. Steklov,MikhailAleksandrovichBakunin,4 vis., Moscow, 1926-27, III, 112.6 Carr,op. cit., p. 175.7 M. A. Bakunin,Oeuvres,6 vls., Paris, 1895-1913, II, 399; Steklov,op. cit., I, 189.8 Peter Kropotkin,Memoirsof a Revolutionist,Boston, 1899, p. 288.9 Pyziur, op. cit., p. 10.


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The Legacy of Bakunin 131tions of his own time and of ours. What this article seeks to demon-strate is that Bakunin's ideas, no less than his personality, have ex-erted a lasting influence, an influence that has been particularlynoticeable during the past few years. If ever the spirit of Bakuninspoke, it was in the student quarter of Paris in May 1968, where theblack flag of anarchism was prominently displayed and where, amongthe graffitiinscribed on the walls of the Sorbonne, Bakunin'sfamousdeclaration that "The urge to destroy is a creative urge" occupied aconspicuous place. In our own country Eldridge Cleaver, in Soul onIce, has expressed his indebtedness to Bakunin and Nechaev's Cate-chism of a Revolutionary, which, interestingly enough, has recentlybeen published in pamphlet form by the Black Panther organizationin Berkeley. The sociologist Lewis Coser has detected a neo-Baku-ninist streak in Regis Debray, whom he has cleverly dubbed "Nech-aev in the Andes," after Bakunin's fanatical young disciple."' AndFrantz Fanon's influential book, The Wretched of the Earth, with itsManichaeanvisions of the despised and rejected rising from the lowerdepths to exterminate their colonial oppressors, occasionally readsas though lifted straight out of Bakunin's collected works. In short,at a time when a new generation has rediscovered spontaneous, un-doctrinaire insurrectionism, Bakunin's teachings have come intotheir own.What are these ideas that have proved so relevant in the twentiethcentury-more so, perhaps, than in Bakunin's own time? Above all,Bakunin foresaw the true nature of modern revolution more clearlythan any of his contemporaries, Marx not excepted. For Marx thesocialist revolution required the emergence of a well-organized andclass-conscious proletariat, something to be expected in highly indus-trialized countries like Germany or England. Marx regarded thepeasantry as the social class least capable of constructive revolu-tionary action: together with Lumpenproletariat of the urban slums,the peasants were benighted and primitive barbarians, the bulwarkof counterrevolution. For BakuninD, y contrast, the peasantry andLumpenproletariat, having been least exposed to the coraupting in-fluences of bourgeois civilization, retained their primitive vigor andturbulent instinct for revolt The real proletariat, he said, did notconsist in the skilled artisans and organized factory workers, whowere tainted by the pretensions and aspixiations f the middle classes,

10 Dissent, January-February1968, pp. 41-44.


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132 The RussianReviewbut in the great mass of "uncivilized,disinherited, and illiterate"millions who truly had nothing to lose but their chains.Thus,whileMarxbelieved in an organizedrevolution ed by a trainedand dis-ciplined workingclass, Bakunin et his hopes on a peasant acqueriecombinedwith a spontaneous isingof the infuriatedurbanmobs,arevolt of the uncivilizedmasstsdriven by an instinctivepassion forjustice and by an unquenchable hirst for revenge. Bakunin'smodelhad been set by the great rebellionsof Razin and Pugachev in theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His vision was of an all-em-bracingupheaval,a truerevolt of the masses,including,besidestheworking class, the darkest elements of society-the Lumpenprole-tariat, the primitive peasantry,the unemployed, the outlaws-allpitted against hose who throveon their miseryandenslavement.Subsequentevents have, to a remarkableextent, confirmed heaccuracyof Bakunin's ision. It is small wonder, then, that contem-poraryhistorianshave showna new appreciation f the roleof spon-taneousandprimitivemovementsn shapinghistory.Fromthe workof BarringtonMoore,who has recently investigatedthe relationshipbetweenmodernization ndagrarian evolt,as well as of Eric Hobs-bawm, GeorgeRude,E. P. Thompson,and others,we arecomingtounderstandhatmostmodemrevolutions,ike thoseof thepast,havebeenlargelyunplannedandspontaneous,drivenby massmovementsof urbanand rural aborers,and in spirit predominantly narchistic.No longercan thesenaive, primitive,andirrational roupsbe writtenoffasfringeelements o be ignoredby the historian.They lie, rather,at the very basis of social change.Bakunin foresaw that the great revolutions of our time wouldemergefromthe"lowerdepths"of comparatively ndevelopedcoun-tries.He saw decadence n advancedcivilizationand vitality n back-ward, primitivenations.He insisted that the revolutionary mpulsewas strongestwheremenhad no property,no regularemployment,andno stake n thingsas theywere;andthismeant that the universalupheavalof his dreamswould start in the southand east of Europerather hanin suchprosperous nd disciplinedcountriesas Englandor Germany.Theserevolutionary isionswereclosely related to Bakunin'sarlyPanslavism. n 1848he spokeof the decadence of WesternEuropeand saw hope in the moreprimitive, ess industrializedSlavsfor itsregeneration.Convincedthat the breakup of the AustrianEmpire


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The Legacy of Bakunin 133was an essentialcondition or a Europeanrevolution,he called for itsdestruction and replacement by independent Slavic republics,adream realizedseventy yearslater. He correctlyanticipatedthe fu-tureimportanceof Slavicnationalism,and he saw, moreover, hat arevolutionof Slavs would precipitate the social transformation fEurope.He prophesied, n particular,a messianicrole for his nativeRussiaakinto the ThirdRomeof the pastand the ThirdInternationalof the future."Thestars of revolution,"he wrote in 1848,"willrisehigh above Moscow froma sea of blood and fire, and will turn intothe lodestarto lead a liberatedhumanity.""1

We can see then why it is Bakunin,ratherthan Marx,who canclaimto be the trueprophetof modemrevolution.The threegreatestrevolutionsof the twentieth century-in Russia,Spain,and China-have all occurred n relativelybackwardcountriesand have largelybeen "peasantwars" inkedwith spontaneousoutburstsof the urbanpoor, as Bakuninpredicted.The peasantryand unskilledworkers,those primitive groups for whom Marx expressed withering con-tempt, have become the mass base of twentieth-century ocial up-heavals-upheavals which, though often labelled "Marxist,"re farmoreaccuratelydescribedas 'Bakuninist."' akunin'svisions,more-over,have anticipated he social fermentwithin the "ThirdWorld"as a whole, the modem counterparton a global scale of Baku in'sbackward,peripheralEurope.It is hardly surprising,herefore, hat the spirit of Bakunin houldpervadethe writings of such contemporary heoristsof mass revoltas FrantzFanonand RegisDebray,and to a lesserdegreeof EldridgeCleaverandHerbertMarcuse.Fanon,no less thanBakunin,was con-vinced that the working class had been corruptedby the values ofthe establishmentand had thus lost its revolutionary ervor."Thegreatmistake," e wrote,"the nherentdefectin themajority f polit-ical partiesof the underdevelopedregionshasbeen, followingtradi-tional lines, to approach n the firstplace those elementswhich arethe most politicallyconscious:the workingclassesin the towns,theskilled workersand the civil servants-that is to say,a tiny portionofthe population,which hardlyrepresentsmore than one percent."12Fanon,like Bakunin,pinnedhis hopes on the greatmassof unpriv-ileged and un-Europeanized illage laborersand Lumpenproletariat

11George Woodcock,Anarchism, leveland, 1962, p. 155.12Frantz Fanon, TheWretched f the Earth,New York, 1966, p. 88.


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134 The Russian Reviewfrom the shanty towns, uprooted, impoverished, tarving,and withnothing to lose. For Fanon, as for Bakunin, he more primitive theman, the purerhis revolutionary pirit.When Fanon refersto "thehopeless dregs of humanity" s naturalrebels,he is spealdng he lan-guage of Bakunin.With Bakunin, moreover,he sharesnot only acommonfaith in the revolutionarypotential of the underworld,butalso a vision of rebirththrough ire and a thoroughgoing ejectionofEuropeancivilizationas decadent and repressive-inplace of which,he says, the Third World must begin "anew history of man."TheBlack Panthers, n turn, have appropriatedmany of Fanon's deas,and Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton freely acknowledgetheirdebt to him-and indirectlyto Bakunin-when describing he blacksin Americaas an oppressedcolony kept in check by an occupationarmy of white policemen and exploited by white businessmenandpoliticians.In a similarvein,HerbertMarcusewritesin One DimensionalManthat the greatesthope of revolutionary hangelies in "thesubstratumof the outcastsand outsiders, he exploitedand persecutedof otherraces and other colors,the unemployedand the unemployables."fthese groups,he adds, should ally themselveswith the radicalintel-lectuals,theremight occuran uprisingof "the most advancedcon-sciousnessof humanityand its most exploitedforce."'3Here againit is Bakuninratherthan Marx whose influenceis apparent.ForBakuninset greatstore by the disaffectedstudentsand intellectualsand assigned them a key role in the impendingworld revolution.Bakunin'spropheticvision of an all-encompassing lasswar, in con-trastto Marx'smorenarrowly onceivedstrugglebetweenproletariatand bourgeoisie,made ampleroom for this additional,fragmentedelement of societyforwhich Marxhad only disdain.In Marx's iew,rootless ntellectualsdid not comprisea classof theirown, nor werethey an integralcomponentof the bourgeoisie.They were merely"thedregs"of the middle class,"abunchof declasses"-lawyerswith-out clients, doctorswithout patients, petty journalists, mpecuniousstudents,and their ilk-with no vital role to.play in the historicalprocessof class conflict.'4ForBakunin,on the otherhand,the intel-lectuals were a valuable revolutionaryforce, "fervent, energetic

13 Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, Boston, 1964, pp. 256-57.14 Max Nomad, Apostles of Revolution, Boston, 1939, p. 127. Cf. Lewis Feuer,Marxand the Intellectuals,New York, 1969, pp. 216-28.


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The Legacy of Bakunin 135youths, totally declasse,with no careeror way out."'5The declass6s,Bakuninpointed out, like the jobless Lumpenproletariat nd thelandlesspeasantry,had no stake whatever n things as they wereandno prospect for improvementexcept through an immediate revolu-tion that would demolishthe existing order.In general,then, Bakunin ound the greatest revolutionarypoten-tial in uprooted, alienated, de'classe' lements, elements either leftbehindby, orrefusingto fit into,modem society.And hereagainhewas a truer prophet than his contemporaries.For the alliance ofestranged ntellectualswith the dispossessedmasses n guerrilla-stylewarfarehasbeen a centralfeatureof modem revolutions.Regis De-bray, n Revolution n the Revolution?,another nfluentialmanualofmodemrebellion,carriesthis idea to its ultimateconclusion.Peoplewho have jobs, says Debray, who lead more or less normalworkinglives in town or village, however poor and oppressed,are essentiallybourgeoisbecause they have something to lose-their work, theirhomes,their sustenance.ForDebray only the rootlessguerrilla,withnothing to lose but his life, is the true proletarian,and the revolu-tionarystruggle, f it is to be successful,must be conductedby bandsofprofessional uerrillas-i.e.declasse ntellectuals-who,in Debray'swords,would "initiate he highest forms of classstruggle."'6Bakunindifferedwith Marxon still anotherpoint that is of con-siderablerelevance for the present.Bakuninwas a firm believerinimmediaterevolution.He rejectedthe view that revolutionaryorceswill emerge gradually, n the fulness of time.What he demanded,neffect,was "freedomnow." He would countenanceno temporizingwith the existing system.The old orderwas rotten, he argued,andsalvationcould be achieved only by destroyingit root and branch.Gradualism nd reformism n any shapewere futile, palliativesandcompromises f no use.Bakunin'swas a dreamof immediateand uni-versaldestruction, he levelling of all existingvalues and institutions,and the creation of a new libertariansociety on their ashes. In hisview, parliamentarydemocracywas a shameless fiction so long asmen were being subjected to economic exploitation.Even in thefreest of states, he declared, such as Switzerlandand the UnitedStates, he civilizationof the few is founded. n the travailanddegra-dationof the many."I do not believe in constitutionsand laws,"he

15 M. A. Bakunin,Gesammelte Werke, 3 vls., Berlin, 1921-24, III, 120-21.16RMgisDebray, Revolution in the Revolution?, New York,1967, pp. 95-116.


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136 The RussianReviewsaid. "Thebest constitution n the worldwouldnot be able to satisfyme.We need somethingdifferent: nspiration, ife, a new lawlessandtherefore ree world."'7In rejectingthe claim of parliamentarydemocracy to representthe people,Bakunin,as his biographerE. H. Carrhas noted, "spokea languagewhichhasbecome morefamiliar n the twentiethcenturythanit was in the nineteenth."'8 oundingstill anothermodemnote,Bakunin aw the ideal moment or popularrevolution n time of war-and ultimatelyduringaworldwar.In 1870he regarded heFranco-PrussianWar as the harbingerof an anarchistrevolution n whichthe statewould be smashedanda free federationof communesariseon its ruins.The one thing that could save France,he wrote in hisLetters to a Frenchman,was "an elemental, mighty, passionatelyenergetic,anarchistic, estructive,unrestrained prisingof the popu-larmasses,"19 view with which Daniel Cohn-Benditand his fellowrebels of May 1968would enthusiasticallyagree.Bakuninbelieved,like Leninafterhim, thatnationalwar must be converted nto socialrebellion.He dreamtof a generalEuropeanwar,which he felt wasimminent and would destroy the bourgeois world. His timing, ofcourse, was faulty. As Herzen once remarked,Bakuninhabitually"mistookhe thirdmonthof pregnancy or the ninth."But his visionwas at lengthfulfilledwhen the FirstWorldWarbroughtaboutthecollapseof the old orderandreleasedrevolutionaryorces that haveyet to play themselvesout.Let us focus for a moment on the RussianRevolution, he proto-type of twentieth-century ocial upheavals.Here, in essence, wasthe spontaneous"revoltof the masses"that Bakuninhad foreseensomefifty yearsbefore. In 1917 Russiaexperienceda virtualbreak-down of political authority,and councils of workersand peasantssprang up which might form the basis of libertariancommunes.Lenin,like Bakuninbeforehim, encouraged he raw and untutoredelementsof Russian ocietyto sweep awaywhatremainedof the oldregime.BakuninandLenin,for all theirdifferencesof temperamentand doctrine,were alike in theirrefusalto collaboratewith the lib-erals or moderatesocialists,whomthey regardedas incurablycoun-terrevolutionary.Both men were anti-bourgeoisand anti-liberal o

17 Carr,op. cit., p. 181.8Ibid.9 Ibid., p. 411.


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The Legacy of Bakunin 137the roots.Like Bakunin,Lenin called for instantsocialism,withoutany prolonged capitalist phase of development.He too believedthat the globalrevolutionmight be centeredon backwardpeasantRussia.In his April Theses, moreover,he put forwarda numberofspecificallyBakuninistpropositions: he transformationf the worldwar into a revolutionary truggle against the capitalistsystem; therenunciationof parliamentary overnment n favor of a regime ofsoviets patterned after the Paris Commune;the abolition of thepolice,the army,and the bureaucracy; nd the levelling of incomes.Lenin'sappealfor"abreakupand a revolutiona thousand imesmorepowerfulthan that of February"had a distinctly Bakuninist ing-so much so, that one anarchist eader in Petrogradwas convincedthat Lenin intended to "witheraway the state"the momenthe gothold of it.20And, indeed, Lenin'sgreatestachievementwas to return to theanarcho-populist oots of the Russian revolutionary radition, toadapthis Marxist heoriesto suit the conditionsof a relativelyback-ward countryin which a proletarianrevolution made little sense.While the Marxistn Lenin toldhimto be patient,to let Russia volvein accordancewith the laws of historicalmaterialism,he Bakuninistin him insisted that the revolutionmustbe made at once, by fusingthe proletarianrevolutionwith the revolutionsof a land-hungrypeasantryandamilitanteliteof de'classe'ntellectuals, ocialelementsforwhichMarx,aswe haveseen,hadexpressedonly contempt.Smallwonder that Lenin'sorthodoxMarxistcolleagues accused him ofbecomingan anarchistand "the heir to the throneof Bakunin."21Smallwonder, too, that severalyears later a leadingBolshevikhis-toriancouldwrite that Bakunin"was the foundernot only of Euro-pean anarchismbut also of Russianpopulist insurrectionism ndthereforeof RussianSocialDemocracyfrom which the Communistpartyemerged"andthat Bakunin'smethods"inmanyrespectsantic-ipated the emergenceof Sovietpower and forecast, n generalout-line, the courseof the great October Revolutionof 1917."22

Butif Bakunin oresaw he anarchisticnatureof the RussianRevo-lution,he also foresaw ts authoritarianonsequences. f 1917began,as Bakuninhad hoped,with a spontaneousmassrevolt,it ended,as20PaiulAvrich, The RussianAnarchists,Princeton, 1967, p. 129.21 Ibid., p. 128.22Steklov, op. cit., I, 9, 343-45; HI, 118-27.


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138 The Russian ReviewBakuninhadfeared,with the dictatorship f a new rulingelite. Longbefore Machajski r Djilas or James Burnham,Bakuninhad warnedthat a "new class"of intellectualsand semi-intellectualsmight seekto replace the landlords and capitalists and deny the people theirfreedom.In 1873he prophesiedwith startlingaccuracy hat under aso-called dictatorshipof the proletariat"the leaders of the Commu-nist party, namely Mr. Marxand his followers, will proceed to lib-erate humanity n their own way. They will concentrate he reins ofgovernment n a stronghand. . .-. Theywill establisha single statebank, concentrating n its hands all commercial, ndustrial,agricul-tural,and even scientificproduction,and then divide the masses ntotwo armies-industrialand agricultural-under he direct commandof stateengineers,who will constitutea new privilegedscientificandpolitical class."23And yet, for all his assaultson revolutionary ictatorship,Bakuninwas determined to create his own secret society of conspirators,whose memberswould be "subjected o a strict hierarchyand tounconditionalobedience."This clandestineorganization,moreover,wouldremain ntactevenaftertherevolutionhad been accomplishedin orderto forestall the establishmentof any "officialdictatorship."24Thus Bakunincommittedthe verysin he so bitterlydenounced. Hehimself was one of the principaloriginatorsof the idea of a secretand closely knit revolutionaryparty bound together by implicitobedienceto a revolutionarydictator,a partythathe likenedat onepoint to the JesuitOrder.Whilehe recognizedthe intimateconnec-tion between meansand ends, while he saw that the methodsusedto make the revolution must affect the nature of society after therevolution,he nonethelessresortedto methodswhich were the pre-cise contradictionof his own libertarianprinciples.His endspointedtowards reedom,but his means-the clandestinerevolutionary arty-pointed towards totalitariandictatorship.Bakunin,in short, wastrapped n a classicdilemma:He understood hat the lackof an effi-cient revolutionaryorganizationwould spell inevitablefailure,butthe meanshe choseinevitablycorrupted he ends towardswhich heaspired.More hanthat,on the questionof revolutionarymoralityBakuninpreached n effect that the endsjustifythe means.In his Catechism

23 M. A. Bakunin,Izbrannye sochineniia, 5 vls., Petrograd,1919-22, I, 237.24BakUnin,CesammelteWerke, In, 35-38, 82.


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The Legacy of Bakunin 139of a Revolutionary,written with Nechaev exactly a hundredyearsago, the revolutionists depictedas a complete immoralist,bound tocommitany crime, any treachery,any basenessto bring about thedestructionof the existingorder.The revolutionist,wrote Bakuninand Nechaev, "despisesand hates present-daysocial morality n allits forms.He regardseverythingas moralthat favors the triumphofthe revolution. ... All soft and enervating feelings of friendship,love, gratitude,even honormustbe stifledin him by a cold passionfor the revolutionary ause. . . . Day and night he must have onethought,one aim-merciless destruction."25Eldridge Cleavertells usin Soul on Ice that he "fell n love"with Bakuninand Nechaev'sCate-chismand tookit asa revolutionary ible, incorporatingts principlesinto his everydaylife by employing "tactics of ruthlessness n mydealings with everyone with whom I came into contact."26 TheCatechism,as mentionedabove, has recently been published as apamphletby Cleaver'sBlack Pantherorganization n Berkeley.)Hereagain,as in his belief in a clandestineorganization f revolu-tionariesas well asa"temporary"evolutionary ictatorship,Bakuninwas a direct forebear of Lenin. This makesit easier to understandhowit was possiblefor the anarchistsn 1917to collaboratewith theirBolshevikrivals to overthrowthe Kerenskygovernment.After theOctober Revolution, n fact, one anarchist eader even tried to workout an "anarchist heory of the dictatorshipof the proletariat."27There is tragic ironyin the fact that, as in Spain twenty yearslater,the anarchistsshouldhave helped to destroy the fragile embryo ofdemocracy, huspreparing he way for a new tyrannywhich was tobe the author of their downfall.For once in power the Bolsheviksproceeded to suppress their libertarianallies, and the revolutionturned into the opposite of all Bakunin'shopes. Amongthe few an-archistgroupsallowed to remain nexistencewasonewhichsolemnlydeclared its intention to launch the statelesssociety "in interplan-etary space but not upon Sovietterritory"28-whichaisessomeinter-esting prospects n this yearof Armstrong ndAldrin!For most an-archists,however, there remainedonly the melancholyconsolationthat their mentor, Bakunin,had predictedit all fifty years before.

25 Nomad, op. cit., pp. 227-33.26Eldridge Cleaver,Soul on Ice, New York,1968, p. 12.27Avrich,op. cit., p. 200.28Ibid, p. 231.


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140 The RussianReviewBakunin's egacy, then, has been an ambivalentone. This wasbecauseBakuninhimselfwas a manof paradox,possessedof an am-

bivalent nature.A noblemanwho yearned for a peasantrevolt, alibertarianwithanirresistible rgeto dominateothers,anintellectualwithapowerfulanti-intellectual treak,he couldpreachunrestrainedlibertywhile spinningfrom his braina whole networkof secret or-ganizationsand demanding romhis followersunconditionalobedi-ence to his will. In his notoriousConfession o the tsar,moreover,hewas capableof appealing o NicholasI to carrythe bannerof Slav-domintoWesternEuropeanddo awaywith the effeteparliamentarysystem. His Panslavism and anti-intellectualism,his pathologicalhatred of Germansand Jews (Marx,of course,being both), his cultof violence and revolutionarymmoralism,his hatred of liberalismand reformism,his faith in the peasantryand Lumpenproletariat-all thisbroughthimuncomfortablylose to later authoritarianmove-ments of boththe Left andthe Right,movements romwhich Baku-himselfwould doubtlesshave recoiledin horrorhad he lived tosee theirmercurial ise.Yet, forall his ambivalence,Bakuninremainsan influential igure.Herzen once calledhim "aColumbuswithout an America,and evenwithouta ship."29utthe presentrevolutionarymovementoweshima good deal of its energy,its audacity,and its tempestuousness.Hisyouthfulexuberance,his contemptfor middle-classconventions,andhis emphasison deedsrather han theoriesexert considerableappealamong today'srebelliousyouth,for whom Bakuninprovidesan ex-ampleof anarchismn action,of revolutionasa wayof life. His ideas,too,continue o be relevant-perhapsmorerelevantthanever.What-ever his defectsas a scholar,especiallywhen comparedwith Marx,they are morethanoutweighedby his revolutionary isionandintu-ition.Bakuninwas the prophetof primitiverebellion,of the conspir-atorialrevolutionary arty,of terroristamoralism, f guerrilla nsur-rectionism,of revolutionary ictatorship,and of the emergenceof anew ruling class that would impose its will on the people and robthemof theirfreedom.He wasthe firstRussianrebel to preachsocialrevolution n cosmictermsand on an international cale. His formu-las of self-determinationand direct action exercise an increasingappeal,whilehis chief batenoire,the centralizedbureaucratictate,continues o fulfilhismostdespairingpredictions.Of particular ote,

29 Pyziur,op.cit.,p. 5.


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The Legacy of Bakunin 141after the lessonsof Russia,Spain, and China, is Bakunin'smessagethat socialemancipationmustbe attainedby libertarian ather handictatorialmeans.Moreover, t a timewhenworkers' ontrol s againbeing widely discussed, t is well to remember hatBakunin,perhapseven morethan Proudhon,was a prophetof revolutionaryyndical-ism, insistingthat a free federationof trade unionswould be "thelivinggermof the new socialoyderwhich is to replacethe bourgeoisworld.'"30But above all Bakuninis attractiveto present-daystudentsandintellectualsbecausehis libertarianbrand of socialismprovidesanalternativevision to the bankruptauthoritarian ocialism of thetwentieth century.His dreamof a decentralizedsocietyof autono-mous communesandlaborfederationsappealsto those who areseek-ing to escapefroma centralized,conformist,and artificialworld."Iam a student:do not fold, mutilate, or spindleme"has a distinctiveBakuninist lavor. ndeed,studentrebels,even whenprofessedMarx-ists, areoften closerin spiritto Bakunin,whose blackflaghas occa-sionallybeen unfurledin campus demonstrationsrom BerkeleytoParis.Their stress on the natural,the spontaneous,and the unsys-tematic, their urge towardsa simplerway of life, their distrustofbureaucracyand of centralizedauthority,their belief that all menshould take part in decisions affectingtheir lives, their slogansof"participatory emocracy,""freedomnow,""powerto the people,"theirgoalsof communitycontrol,workers'management, uralcoop-eration,equal educationand income, dispersalof state power-allthis is in harmonywith Bakunin'svision. Even the ambivalenceamongso many youthfulrebels,who combinethe antitheticalmeth-ods of libertariananarchismand authoritarian ocialism,reflectstheambivalencewithin Bakunin'sown revolutionaryphilosophyandpersonalmakeup.Finally, Bakunin has found an echo whereveryoung dissidentsquestionour uncriticalfaith in self-glorifyingscientificprogress.Ahundredyearsago Bakuninwarnedthat scientistsand technicalex-perts might use their knowledgeto dominateothers,and that oneday ordinarycitizens would be rudely awakenedto find that theyhad become "the slaves, the playthings,and the victimsof a newgroupof ambitiousmen."'3' akuninthereforepreacheda "revoltof

30 Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism, ndore, n.d., p. 88.31B akunin,Oeuvres, IV, 376.


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142 The Russian Reviewlife against science, or rather, against the rule of science." Not thathe rejected the validity of scientific knowledge. But he recognized itsdangers. He saw that life cannot be reduced to laboratory formulasand that efforts in this direction would lead to the worst form of tyr-anny. In a letter written barely a year before his death, he spoke ofthe "evolution and development of the principle of evil" throughoutthe world and forewarned of what we now call the "military-indus-trial complex." "Sooner or later," he wrote, "these enormous militarystates will have to destroy and devour each other. But what a pros-pectl"32

How justified were his fears can be appreciated now in an age ofnuclear and biological weapons of mass destruction. At a time whenthe idealization of primitive social elements is again in fashion, whenmass rebellion is again being widely preached, and when moderntechnology threatens Western civilization with extinction, Bakuninclearly merits a reappraisal. One is reminded, in conclusion, of a re-mark made by the great anarchist historian Max Nettlau some thirtyyears ago: that Bakunin's "ideas remain fresh and will live forever.""8

32 Nomad, op. cit., p. 206; K. J. Kenafick, Michael Bakunin and Karl Marx, Mel-bourne, 1948, p. 304.33G. P. Maximoff,ed., The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, New York, 1953, p. 48.

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