Karl Marx: Man and Fighter Boris Nicolaievsky and Otto Maenchen-Helfen

Chapter 18: Michael Bakunin

Bakunin was born in 1814 in the Government of Tver. He was the son of a prosperous and noble landed proprietor. He became an officer but soon left the Army and in 1840, being an enthusiastic Hegelian, went to Germany to study philosophy at Berlin University. His teachers were partly the same as Marx's. Bakunin entered the Left Hegelian group and it was not long before he was in the thick of the revolutionary movement. His bold and open opposition to Russian absolutism attracted universal attention, and Europe heard the voice of a Russian revolutionary for the first time. In 1848 Bakunin was a close associate of Herwegh's and he shared the poet's visionary dream of a European revolutionary army which should set forth against the realm of the Tsars. During the years of revolution he went from place to place in Germany, always on the look-out for an opportunity of carrying the agitation into Russia and the other Slavonic countries. He was in contact with the leaders of the German Democratic movement, founded a Russian-Polish revolutionary committee, and prepared a rising in Bohemia. But not one of his numerous plans bore fruit. He participated in the rising in Dresden in May, 1849, more in a mood of desperation than of faith in victory. He was arrested and sentenced to death by a Saxon court. The Austrians, to whom he was handed over, sentenced him to death a second time, and he spent months in chains in the condemned cell. Then the Austrian hangmen handed him over to the gaolers of Russia, who kept him for five years in solitary confinement, first in the fortress of Petropavlovsk, then in the Schlüsselburg. His treatment was unspeakably dreadful. He contracted scurvy, lost all his teeth, and was only amnestied and banished to Siberia after writing a humiliating petition to the Tsar. At last, after five years, there came an opportunity to escape, and he returned to Western Europe by way of Japan and America.

His first meeting with Marx was at an international Democratic banquet in Paris in March, 1844, but the two had heard of each other before. They had a good deal in common. Both had become revolutionaries by way of Hegelian philosophy and both had trodden the path from theory to revolutionary practice. But they differed entirely in their idea of revolutionary practice; in fact in their whole conception of the revolution they were as the poles asunder. In Marx's eyes the revolution was the midwife of the new society which had formed in the womb of the old. The new society would be the outcome of the old, and a new and higher culture would be the heir of the old culture, preserving and developing all the past attainments of humanity. For Bakunin the revolution meant a radical annihilation of existing society. What were all its so-called attainments but a chain by which free humanity was held in bondage? For him the revolution, if it did not mean making a clean sweep of the whole of this accursed civilisation, meant nothing at all. Not one stone of it should remain upon another. Bakunin dreamed of a 'gigantic bonfire of London, Paris and Berlin.' His was the same hatred as that which drove insurrectionary peasants to burn down castles and cities--not just the hated prison and tax office but everything without exception, including schools and libraries and museums. Mankind must return, not just to the Middle Ages, but to the very beginning, and from there the history of man must start again. Weitling and Willich, with whom Bakunin was acquainted, had similar ideas, but compared to the master of complete and absolute negation they were but pitiful and harmless pupils.

It was evident that in these circumstances it was impossible for Marx and Bakunin to come very close to one another. Bakunin appreciated Marx's clear and penetrating intellect, but flatly repudiated his political activity. At the beginning of 1848, when he met Marx in Brussels, he said to a friend that Marx was spoiling the workers by turning them into raisonneurs. Marx was giving his lectures on wage-labour and capital at the time, summarising the results of his investigations into the structure of capitalist society. Bakunin was convinced that this could have but one consequence; theorising was bound to paralyse the workers' revolutionary will, their 'spirit of destruction,' which for him was the only 'creative spirit.' Marx never had the slightest sympathy for such incendiary fantasies. He had a fundamental mistrust for preaching such as his, and it was impossible for him not to mistrust Bakunin personally. Marx printed a letter in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung which accused Bakunin of being in the pay of the Russian Government. The letter had been sent him by Polish Democrats, and when the groundlessness of the accusation was demonstrated Marx apologised and explained that he had necessarily believed that the Poles must be well-informed about Russian affairs.' At that time the whole of revolutionary Europe looked at Russia through Polish spectacles, and in this Marx differed in no way from everybody else. He admitted having been hasty and did what he could to make good the wrong to Bakunin. Marx publicly defended Bakunin when a similar rumour was spread about him during his imprisonment in Russia. But Bakunin could not forgive Marx the mistake of 1848, which went on rankling for a long time. To make matters worse Bakunin was persuaded by evil-tongued go-betweens, who did not mention Marx's defence of him during his compulsory silence, that Marx actually repeated the old slander.

Bakunin visited Marx in London at the end of October, 1864, when he was writing the inaugural address for the International. The meeting passed off in an entirely amicable manner. Marx wrote to Engels that Bakunin was one of the very few people who after sixteen years had not receded but had gone on developing. What Bakunin said to cause Marx to pass this favourable judgment on him is not known. In his long years of imprisonment Bakunin had suffered greatly and thought much. He had altered, and no longer wanted to make giant bonfires of capital cities. In Siberia he had almost got to the point of repudiating his revolutionary way of thinking altogether, and when he was free once more he spent a considerable time hesitating whether to adhere to the bourgeois radicals or to the Socialists. He then started returning step by step to his original negative anarchism. In his conversation with Marx he asserted that henceforward he would devote himself to the Socialist movement alone, and said that in Italy, where he was just going, he proposed working for the International.

Marx did not know Bakunin well enough to realise how little these words were to be credited. There was a streak of naïve slyness in Bakunin's character, and he was skilful at adapting his speech to his company. Bakunin would by no means say all he thought; indeed, he would quite often say the reverse. A story of how he tried to make a revolutionary of the Bishop Polykarp, an adherent of the Old Faith, provides a pretty instance of Bakunin's way of tackling people he wanted to win over. According to the story Bakunin entered the Bishop's room singing a sacred song and requested an explanation of the difference between the persecuted Old Faith and the prevalent orthodoxy. He said he was willing to become an Old Believer himself if the Bishop could convince him. After listening humbly to the Bishop he drew a magnificent picture of the revolution, by which the true Old Faith would be allowed to triumph over the Orthodox Church and cause the Tsar himself to be converted, and much more of the same kind. This story need not be credited entirely, but it illustrates in all essentials how far Bakunin could occasionally go.

Bakunin had no intention of keeping his promise to work for the International in Italy. Even before starting on his journey he set about the formation of his own secret society, which had nothing whatever to do with the International, either in programme or organisation. In respect of organisation Bakunin was a revolutionary of the old school. He belonged entirely to the epoch of the Illuminati and the Carbonari. In his opinion the one thing necessary to prepare the way for the revolution and consolidate it after victory was a highly conspiratorial band of determined men, a band of professional revolutionaries and plotters, who lived for nothing but the revolution. 'In the midst of the popular anarchy that will create the very life and energy of the revolution, the unity of revolutionary thought and revolutionary action must find an organ. That organ must be a secret and universal association of revolutionary brothers.' That is Bakunin's own summary of his revolutionary creed. Bakunin was continually engaged in founding organisations of one kind or another, and sometimes he was engaged on several at the same time. They all had secret statutes and programmes that varied with the degree of initiation of the members, and ceremonial oaths, if possible sworn on a dagger or some similar theatrical requisite, were usual. Bakunin formed a secret society of this kind in 1865--the 'Fraternité Internationale.' It never entered his head for a moment to do anything for the International, and he barely answered the letters that Marx wrote him.

In the autumn of 1867 Bakunin travelled from Italy to take part in the first Congress of the League of Peace and Freedom. This organisation represented the last attempt of the Democratic celebrities of 1848 and 1849, who for two decades had been the 'great men of the emigration,' to venture once more into the realm of high politics. The reawakening of political life throughout Europe seemed to proffer this organisation some prospect of success, and there were some famous names upon its list of founders: Victor Hugo, Louis Blanc, John Stuart Mill, Giuseppe Garibaldi. The League's programme was a nebulous mixture of democracy, anti-clericalism and pacifism, intended to mean as much to as many people as possible. In practice it did nothing for anybody.

The League, having practically no solid popular backing of it [sic] own, was very anxious to be on good terms with the International. An attempt was made to have it incorporated as a kind of subsidiary organisation within the International, to enable it to propagate its own special aims among the proletariat. Marx was necessarily opposed to any such plan. The development of the young workers' movement could only be hampered by connection with these generals without an army, for the important men had only lent their names to the League at its inception and in reality the movement was in the hands of Democratic leaders of the second and third rank. To involve the International with the League would mean burdening it with a swarm of ambitious, wrangling and clique-forming political intriguers.

Marx was not able to convince the International of all this until 1868. The Brussels Congress of that year unanimously carried a resolution embodying Marx's attitude to the League. A year before not a few members of the International had sympathised with the idea of the League and had been only too pleased to take part in its Congress. The League had counted on this and held its inaugural Congress at the same time and place as the second Congress of the International, and a number of delegates remained and took part in the League Congress after the International had concluded its deliberations. At the League Congress they made the acquaintance of Bakunin.

His appearance was an event of first-rate importance for the League. Many of the older generation knew him from earlier years, from his life of wandering before the revolution or from the exciting days of Paris, Berlin, Dresden or Prague. Everyone had heard of the man who had been dragged through the prisons of Europe and had been' twice sentenced to death, and his escape from the grim horror of Siberia had already become legendary. 'I well remember his impressive bearing at the first session of the Congress,' a Russian journalist wrote in his memoirs. 'As he walked up the steps that led to the platform, with his heavy, peasant gait--he was, as usual, negligently dressed in his grey blouse, out of which there peeped not a shirt but a flannel vest--a great cry of "Bakunin!" arose. Garibaldi, who was in the chair, rose and went forward to embrace him. Many opponents of Bakunin's were present, but the whole hall rose to its feet and the applause was interminable. Bakunin was no speaker if by that word is meant a man who can satisfy a literary or educated public, who is a master of language and whose speeches have a beginning, a middle and an end, as Aristotle teaches. But he was a superb popular orator, and he knew how to talk to the masses, and the most remarkable feature of his oratory was that it was multilingual. His huge form, the power of his gesticulations, the sincerity and conviction in his voice, his short, hatchet-like phrases all contributed to making a profound impression.'

To quote another Russian writer who heard Bakunin at another meeting:

'I no longer remember what Bakunin said, and in any case it would scarcely be possible to reproduce it. His speech had neither logical sequence nor richness in ideas, but consisted of thrilling phrases and rousing appeals. His speech was something elemental and incandescent--a raging storm with lightning flashes and thunderclaps, and a roaring as of lions. The man was a born speaker, made for the revolution. The revolution was his natural being. His speech made a tremendous impression. If he had asked his hearers to cut each other's throats, they would have cheerfully obeyed.' That was how Bakunin's speech echoed sixty years later in the ears of a man who was no revolutionary at the time and was certainly no revolutionary when he wrote his memoirs. His name was Baron Wrangel, and he was the father of the well-known General Wrangel, who fought against the Bolsheviks in South Russia in 1919 and 1920.

Bakunin's forceful personality gained him devoted followers in the League and among the members of the International. As was his invariable habit he hastened to confirm his first success by enrolling new initiates into one of his secret societies. The 'Fraternité Internationale' appears to have been somewhat reorganised on this occasion, and it may well have received a new name. (The history of Bakunin's secret societies is still in many respects uncertain. They were so often reorganised than even Bakunin himself could not remember all their ramifications and vicissitudes.) At any rate the 'Fraternité' was transplanted from Italy to Central Europe.

At the same time Bakunin became a member of the League central committee. He did all he could to make the League accept a revolutionary programme and bring it into line with the International. His undoubted aim was to bring the two organisations together and, by means of his secret organisation, become the unseen leader of both. In this he failed. The majority of the League's members were by no means revolutionary-minded, and all Bakunin's proposals were voted down. He became increasingly convinced of the impossibility of converting the League into a suitable instrument for his revolutionary work, and he awoke to the fact that there was far greater scope for his activity in the International. He met many of its members and became acquainted with the development of its ideas. He had hitherto refrained from joining it himself, but in July, 1868, he joined the Geneva branch. In the autumn, after the International had definitely broken with the League, he broke with it himself. At the second League Congress, held at the end of September, 1868, he proposed that it make a public avowal of Socialism. His resolution was obviously unacceptable, and when the League turned it down he and his followers left the Congress and resigned from membership.

He promptly summoned his followers, most of whom were adherents of the 'Fraternité Internationale,' and proposed that they join the International in a body. This was intended to keep his followers together. Joining the International in this way would intensify rather than weaken their corporate sense. His followers approved his plan, with a few unimportant alterations. An open association, 'L'Alliance Internationale de la Démocratie Sociale,' was founded to exist side by side with the secret society. The Alliance was intended to include members outside the secret society, and thus act as a screen for the secret society. It was to have its own programme and statutes, its own leaders, its own sections in various countries, its own international Congresses to be held at the same time and place as those of the International. The plan was to form a state within a state within the International. Officially the object of the Alliance was the unpretentious one of 'investigating social and philosophical questions.' Its real purpose was to gain control of the International and lead it whither Bakunin wanted, for behind it there would be his secret organisation. There was to be a three-story pyramid, with the International as the base, the Alliance on top of it and on top of the Alliance the secret society, with Bakunin the 'invisible dictator' at the pinnacle.

The plan was too clever and consequently too clumsy to succeed. It failed to get farther than the initial stages. The Alliance was successfully founded and quite a number of respectable and deserving members of the Swiss sections of the International joined it. The statutes were duly drawn up and signed and dispatched for confirmation by the General Council. Bakunin's name was among the signatures, tucked in inconspicuously among the rest.

Marx had no means of divining the details of Bakunin's plan, but promptly discerned Bakunin's object. This was no new turn of the working-class movement, no new organisation of workers demanding admission to the ranks of the united international proletariat. This was an organisation created by a plotter of the old school who aimed at gaining control of the great new movement represented by the International, which under Marx's leadership was striving to guide the struggle of the proletariat in the only way it ought to be guided, in all openness, as an open mass-organisation. Marx had not spent twenty years fighting the methods of the Carbonari, and all the poison-and-dagger nonsense, to let it creep into the International by the back-door now.

When statutes of the Alliance came up for consideration by the General Council, its members, of course with Marx's concurrence, expressed a wish that the International should publicly repudiate it. Marx wrote to Engels late that night after the meeting. The thing of which he had heard previously and had regarded as still-born, he said, and had wanted to let quietly die had turned out to be more serious than he had expected. 'Herr Bakunin--who is at the back of this affair--is kind enough to want to take the workers' movement under Russian control.' Marx was particularly incensed at such a thing having been perpetrated by a Russian, citizen of a country that had no workers' movement of its own and was therefore less fit than anybody to grapple with the difficulties confronting the European movement. Engels pacified Marx a little. He said it was as clear as daylight that the International would not allow itself to be taken in by a swindle such as this state within a state, this organisation which had nothing whatever behind it. 'I, like you, consider it to be a still-born, purely local, Geneva affair. Its only chance of survival would be for you to attack it violently and give it importance thereby. In my opinion it would be best firmly but quietly to dismiss these people with their pretensions to insinuate themselves into the International.' Marx agreed with Engels, and the General Council declined to confirm the statutes of the Alliance as an organisation within the International. After protracted negotiations the Alliance as such was eventually dissolved. Individual groups of its members were permitted to enter the International under the usual conditions and to form local sections. No mention of the secret society was made throughout, and the General Council did not know of its existence. The secret society disintegrated once more and was once more reconstructed. Bakunin quarrelled with the majority of the directoire centrale of the Fraternité Internationale, resigned from the Fraternité and dissolved it, only to found it anew promptly afterwards with his own most devoted followers. His first rapprochement with Nechaiev, of whom more will be said later, occurred during these months.

Bakunin had not answered Marx from Italy, and he gave no sign of life from Switzerland. Marx sent him a copy of Das Kapital, but Bakunin remained silent and did not even write a line of thanks. But a few days after the Alliance had submitted its statutes to the General Council Bakunin wrote. It was a long letter, overflowing with friendliness. 'My country is now the International, of which you are one of the principal founders. You see, therefore, my dear friend, that I am your disciple, and I am proud of it.'1

This sounded genuine, upright and sincere, but it was anything but what it seemed. The letter was a calculated part of the web of intrigue that Bakunin was spinning round Marx. Bakunin certainly had a high opinion of Marx and considered Das Kapital to be a scientific achievement of supreme importance. He even wanted to translate it into Russian. But that did not affect Bakunin's conviction that Marx was his arch-enemy, whose main purpose was to lay snares and traps for him; and he believed himself to be thoroughly justified in fighting Marx. Some three months after this declaration of love Bakunin wrote to his old friend, Gustav Vogt, one of the founders of the League, of the 'distrust or even ill-will of a certain coterie the centre of which you no doubt have guessed as well as I.' That coterie was the General Council of the International which had been against amalgamation with the League of Peace and Freedom, and its centre was Marx, Bakunin's cher ami.

In a letter he wrote Alexander Herzen on October 28, 1869, Bakunin explained in all clarity the methods he proposed to use in his campaign against Marx. Herzen had remonstrated with Bakunin for daring to attack some of Marx's followers in the Press without daring to attack Marx himself. Bakunin replied that he had two reasons for refraining from attacking Marx. The first was the real service that Marx had done by laying the foundations of scientific socialism. 'The second reason is policy and tactics. ... I praised and honoured Marx for tactical reasons and on grounds of personal policy. Don't you see what all these gentlemen are? Our enemies form a phalanx, and to be able to defeat it the more easily it is necessary to divide it and break it up. You are more learned than I, and therefore know better than I who first said: Divide et impera. If I started an open war against Marx now, three-quarters of the International would turn against me, and I should find myself slipping down an inclined plane, and I should lose the only ground on which I wish to stand.' To weaken the Marxian phalanx Bakunin chose to attack Marx's little-known followers, and in the meantime he stressed his friendship for Marx.

Marx was not for a moment deceived as to what his expression of friendship was really worth. He did not answer Bakunin's love letter. Marx had not a few defects. He was not always easy and pleasant to get on with, but he was incapable of simulating friendship for a person while he was busy laying a trap for him.

Bakunin worked very hard to build up and extend his secret society, and it was important to be on good terms with the group of young 'Internationalists' at Locle, who have already been mentioned. Bakunin made the acquaintance of Guillaume, their leader, in January, 1869. Guillaume invited him to Locle. He accepted the invitation and was received like a hero. Guillaume's account of the events of that day deserve to be repeated, for he paints such a characteristic picture of Bakunin, illustrating not only Bakunin as seen through his followers' eyes, but how Bakunin presented himself to them.

'The news of the arrival of the celebrated Russian revolutionary had put Locle into a state of high excitement. He was the sole subject of conversation in workshops, clubs and drawing-rooms. ... Everyone said that the presence in the ranks of the International of a man as energetic as he could not fail to be a source of great strength.'2 Locle was an obscure provincial township, and for a celebrity to visit it was an epoch-making event; and now a rare and exotic celebrity was actually on the spot. The big watchmaking village could scarcely contain itself with excitement. 'I went to meet him at the station with Father Meuron, and we took him to the International Club, where we spent the rest of the afternoon talking with some friends who had gathered there.'3 The local branch, the Cercle International, was just celebrating the sixty-fifth birthday of 'Father' Neuron, a French émigré, who had been a Carbonaro in the days of the July Monarchy and perhaps in the days of the Restoration too. The Internationalists of Locle, all hungry for experience, surrounded Bakunin. 'If Bakunin's imposing stature struck the imagination, the familiarity of his greeting gained men's hearts. He promptly made a conquest of everybody.'4 Bakunin showed himself a blithe and sociable human being, a good raconteur, homely and simple. 'In conversation Bakunin willingly related anecdotes, gave reminiscences of his youth, told us things he had said or heard. He had a whole repertoire of anecdotes, proverbs and favourite sayings that he liked to repeat.'5 Guillaume particularly remembered one story which Bakunin told. 'Once, at the end of a dinner in Germany, he had proposed a toast, he told us laughing, saying: "I drink to the destruction of public order and the unleashing of evil passions."'6 Bakunin described the seven stages of happiness as follows: 'In the first place, the supreme happiness was to die fighting for liberty; in the second place, love and friendship; in the third place, science and art; in the fourth place, smoking; in the fifth place, drinking; in the sixth place, eating; and in the seventh place, sleeping.'7

Twenty years before Bakunin had defined the seven stages of happiness in the same way, and he had spoken of the unleashing of the passions then too. Only in the meantime the sentiments had grown somewhat faded. Richard Wagner had heard Bakunin say all these things in 1849, only in Wagner's memoirs they sound like extracts from some dim northern saga. But retailed by Guillaume they remind one of a provincial schoolmaster describing the bounty of some brilliant talker to an admiring audience.

Bakunin accepted Guillaume into his secret society. Bakunin no longer attached importance to swearing oaths upon a dagger. He explained the object of the society as 'a free association of men who united for collective action, without formality, without solemnity, without mysterious rites, simply because they felt confidence in one another and deemed unity preferable to isolated action.'8 Guillaume is no objective witness, but he must have been pretty faithful to the facts in this. However much Bakunin wanted to assimilate his organisation to the International, it remained a secret society within the International, keeping its existence secret from it and aiming at gaining control of it. Guillaume bears witness to this, for he describes how Meuron, the old Carbonaro, who joined the secret society at the same time, rejoiced. 'He rejoiced at the thought that the International would be doubled by a secret organisation which should preserve it from the dangers to which the intriguing and ambitious might subject it.'9

The contrast between the ideas of the old Illuminati, Carbonari and the rest and those whose aim was to use the International to lead the workers into forming great mass-organisations could not have been better expressed than it was by père Meuron. He had spent his whole life as a member of one or other small band of conspirators, and he could not conceive that a mass-organisation in which there was such a thing as an open struggle of ideas could be anything but a cockpit for the intriguing and ambitious. It seemed obvious to him that the unrestricted life of a large, public organisation, open to all the world, must be supervised by groups of the type familiar to him. These groups, set up behind the back of the mass-organisation, must obviously refrain from openly proclaiming their programmes, and even their existence must not be known of. It was these groups that must be the real controllers of the movement. Meuron and those who thought like him regarded all this as entirely open and above-board. So far from regarding it as partaking of the nature of intrigue, they actually regarded it as a sure defence and shield against the ambitious and intriguing.

Bakunin managed to extend his secret society pretty quickly, in spite of obstacles. He and his friends had great hopes of the next International Congress, to be held at Bâle in September, 1869. They made every effort to be as well represented at it as possible. The secret Alliance sent instructions to its adherents in every corner of Europe, directing them whom to choose as delegates and to whom to give a mandate if they could not send one of their own men. In many areas members were very surprised indeed to find that for the first time in the history of the International the selection of delegates was not being carried out in a straightforward, open, matter-of-fact way, and letters reached the General Council asking what was in the wind.

Bakunin and his followers had not worked badly, and they were represented at the Congress in quite respectable numbers. Nevertheless their expectations were not entirely fulfilled, though they had one or two successes. The most important was in the debate on the inheritance question. The Congress rejected the resolution of the General Council, which was drafted by Marx, and accepted Bakunin's resolution instead. But they did not succeed in their principal aim, which was to have the headquarters of the General Council transferred from London to Geneva, where Bakunin would have been its lord and master.

The Bâle Congress marks an important stage in the struggle between 'Marxists' and 'Bakuninists.' The fundamental differences were not mentioned, the root-problem was not debated, and the real dispute was only hinted at. But anyone who followed the progress of the Congress attentively and had a certain experience of the history of the movement could plainly detect the call to battle. Moses Hess, the 'Communist rabbi,' had a practised ear. He had been present at Marx's struggle with Weitling and had known the cause of dissension between Marx and Gottschalk and had followed Marx's struggle with Willich and his followers in the Communist League. He attended the Congress and heard the unspoken words: 'The Collectivists of the International believe that the political revolution must precede the social and democratic revolution.' Bakunin and his followers made the political revolution coincide with the social revolution. They made no concealment of their opinion. The organ of Bakunin's followers in Switzerland wrote as answer to Hess's utterance, 'We shall persist in refusing to associate ourselves with any political movement the immediate and direct aim of which is not the immediate and direct emancipation of the workers.' The qualifying relative clause is emphasised in the original. The Bakuninists did not reject political struggle of any kind, as was later supposed. If its object was the direct realisation of their ultimate aim, 'the revolution and social democracy,' they were ready to participate. They were even capable of making quite big concessions and deviating widely from their usual tactics. But they insisted that any political movement in which they took part must lead directly to the social revolution. That was the condition from which they would not depart. The emphasis was on the definition of direct and immediate.

About this time, at the end of 1869, the Bakuninists started proclaiming the principle of not taking part in elections for any kind of Parliament, and with this their struggle with the Marxists in Switzerland began. Taking part in the Swiss elections, i.e. in the political movement, meant embarking on a long period of patient work of enlightenment among the workers, and only those who believed that the political and social revolution could not be one could undertake it. On the other hand, in lands where the revolution was ripening quickly, the Bakuninists by no means declined to participate in elections, granted that the elections were the first step to the social revolution. But the elections had to be the first step. The second step must be the social revolution itself. Those were the tactics of Bakunin's followers in Paris, the leader of whom was Varlin, the best-known representative of the Paris section of the International at the time. He proclaimed himself, in the Press and in court, an adherent of 'anti-authoritarian Communism,' which was the name by which the Bakuninists started calling themselves.

Varlin had joined Bakunin's secret society at the Bâle Congress, and was Bakunin's closest confidant in Paris. Nevertheless at the end of 1869 he joined the staff of the Marseillaise, which was edited by Rochefort and was the most influential radical paper in Paris. It was actually the organ of the General Council of the International and of Marx personally and it stood for participation in the elections. Its policy was that the electoral movement and Parliament must be used for the revolution. Varlin explained his motives in a letter to his Swiss associates. He said that the existing situation in France did not permit the Socialist party to remain aloof from politics. At the moment the question of the imminent fall of the Empire took precedence of everything else, and it was necessary for the Socialists to be at the head of the movement, under pain of abdication. If they held aloof from politics, they would be nothing in France to-day, while as it was they were on the eve of being everything. Neither the Swiss nor Bakunin himself had any objection to this policy, which in their eyes was justified if it led to the revolution and was the most direct way to the social revolution.

Whatever criticism may be made of Bakunin, he was not a man to be satisfied with empty formulas. He acted in accordance with the demands of his ideas, and he acted very energetically. Immediately after the conclusion of the Bâle Congress, at which he strengthened and extended his secret society, he set about preparing for a revolutionary rising. What his plains were, the exact details of what he was preparing for, are not known, but it is known that in December, 1869, and January, 1870, he was conducting a lively correspondence with members of his organisation in various French towns, for the revolution was to break out first in France. His people worked devotedly and successfully.

A large number of the most active members of the International, revolutionary-minded young men like Varlin and Pindy in Paris, Richard in Lyon, Bastelica in Marseilles, entered Bakunin's organisation and prepared for an insurrection. The situation seemed more favourable than ever. The prestige of the Empire was severely shaken and everyone felt that its days were numbered. The revolution, the downfall of Louis Bonaparte, might perhaps be delayed a little longer, but it was inevitable nevertheless. The policy of the General Council, led by Marx, was based on the imminence of a revolution in France. But it differed fundamentally, in general and in particular, down to even the most insignificant details, from that of Bakunin. Bakunin's societies, unknown to the working masses, with a programme that they carefully concealed, worked outside society, worked deliberately outside society, planning and plotting violence.

The General Council strove to lead the workers as a whole, as a mass-movement, towards a political and economic struggle with the Empire that should be above-board and patent to everybody, and they strove to teach the workers the incompatibility in practice of their interests and those of their rulers. In May, 1870, the French Imperial Government started a hue-and-cry after the International, dissolving its sections and arresting a number of its leaders. To Marx this declaration of war was welcome. 'The French Government,' he wrote to Engels on May 18, 'has at last done what we have so long wanted--turned the political question of empire or republic into a question of life and death for the working class.' The International, suppressed by Napoleon, must promptly re-arise and openly defy the ban, exploiting in every one of its utterances every opportunity, however meagre, of proclaiming to rulers and workers alike its determination not to allow itself to be suppressed and its resolution to continue with its mass-propaganda. 'Our French members are demonstrating beneath the eyes of the French Government the difference between a secret political society and a real workers' movement,' Marx wrote in the same letter. 'Scarcely had the committee members in Paris, Lyon, Rouen, Marseilles, etc., been locked up (some of them succeeded in escaping to Switzerland) when twice the number of new committees immediately proclaimed themselves their successors with the most impudent and defiant announcements in the newspapers, even giving their private addresses.'

The Bakuninists went on plotting in the dark. Marx heard of their existence for the first time in the spring of 1871, and for some time all he knew about them was the fact of their existence. When material dealing with the Bakuninist organisations fell into the hands of the Paris police as a result of the arrests in May, 1871, and the public prosecutor announced in the Press that a secret society of conspirators existed besides the official International, Marx believed it to be one of the usual police discoveries. 'It's the old tomfoolery,' he wrote to Engels. 'In the end the police won't even believe each other any more. This is too good.'

Marx did not yet know how wide the ramifications of Bakunin's organisation were. The abyss that separated his conception of programme, tactics and method from that of Bakunin at the beginning of 1870 had become so wide that it was unbridgeable. Marx had to engage once more in the struggle in which he had been engaged for the greater part of his life in constantly changing forms. Meanwhile war had become inevitable. European events postponed it, complicated it, blurred the issues. That it was bound to break out was clear to everyone in the winter of 1869.

Chapter 18 notes

1: 'Ma patrie maintenant c'est l'Internationale, dont tu es l'un des principaux fondateurs. Tu vois donc, cher ami, que je suis ton disciple, et je suis fier de l'être.'

2: 'La nouvelle de la venue a'u célèbre révolutionnaire russe avait mis le Locle en émoi; et dans les ateliers, dans les cercles, dans les salons, on ne parlait que de lui. ... On se disait que la présence, dans les rangs de l'Internationale, d'un homme aussi énergique, ne pouvait manquer de lui apporter une grande force.'

3: 'J'étais allé l'attendre à la gare avec le père Meuron, et nous le conduisîmes au Cercle International, où nous passâmes le reste de l'après--midi à causer avec quelques amis qui s'y étaient réunis.'

4: 'Si l'imposante stature de Bakounine frappait les imaginations, la familiarité de son accueil lui gagnait les cœurs; il fit immèdiatement la conquête a'e tout le monde.'

5: 'Dans les conversations, Bakounine racontait volontiers des historiettes, des souvenirs de sa jeunesse, des choses qu'il avait dites ou entendu dire. Il avait tout un répertoire d'anecdotes, de proverbes, des mots favorits qu'il aimait à répéter.'

6: 'Une fois, à la fin d'un dîner, en Allemagne, il avait, nous dit il en riant, porté ce toast, accueilli par un tonnerre d'applaudissements: "Je bois à la destruction de l'ordre public et au déchainement des mauvaises passions."'

7: En premier lieu, comme bonheur suprême mourir en combattant pour la liberté; en second lieu, l'amour et l'amitié; en troisième lieu, la science et l'art; quatriêmement, fumer; cinquièmement, boire; sixièmement, manger; septièment, dormir.'

8: 'Le libre rapprochement d'hommes qui s'unissaient pour l'action collective, sans formalité, sans solennité, sans rites mystérieux, simplement parce qu'ils avaient confiance les uns dans les autres et que l'entente leur paraissait préférable à l'action isolée.'

9: 'Il réjouissait à la pensée que l'Internationale serait doublée d'une organisation secrète qui la préserverait du danger que pouvaient lui faire courir les intrigants et les ambitieux.'