From the archives of The Memory Hole |
This is the original source of the extract by Bakunin found elsewhere on this site. As explained below by the editor of the volume this version came from, part of the original written speech is omitted. However, the relevant material is included.
Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism
Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism
was presented as a Reasoned Proposal
to the Central Committee of the League for Peace and Freedom, by M. Bakunin,
Geneva. The League was an international bourgeois-pacifist
organization founded in September 1867 to head off a war between Prussia
and France over Luxembourg which threatened to engulf all Europe. Among
the sponsors of the League were Victor Hugo, Garibaldi, John Stuart Mill,
and other prominent individuals. At the first congress held in Geneva; Bakunin
delivered a long address. The text was either lost or destroyed and Bakunin
wrote this work in the form of a speech, never finished, like most of his
works. It was divided into three parts. The first and second parts, which
follow, deal with federalism and socialism, respectively; the third part,
on anti-theologism, is omitted here, except for the
diatribe against Rousseau's theory of the state. Bakunin analyzes Rousseau's
doctrine of the social contract, makes distinctions between state and society,
and discusses the relationship between the individual and the community,
and the nature of man in general.
As noted in the Biographical Sketch, Bakunin had no
illusions about the revolutionary potentialities of the League, but he hoped
to influence as many members as possible and propagandize his principles.
In order not to alienate the members
103
1867 103
Bakunin purposely moderated his language, but not his ideas. While the
Central Committee of the League accepted Bakunin's thesis, the congress
rejected it and Bakunin and his supporters resigned in 1868.
Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism differs from
the Catechism in some important ways. While the Catechism
is primarily a program of action based on Bakunin's main ideas, Federalism
is a major theoretical work in which these and other concepts barely mentioned
in the Catechism are analyzed. Bakunin introduces the idea of a transitional
stage in which the full realization of socialism will no doubt
be the work of centuries which history has placed on the agenda
and which we cannot afford to ignore. He also registers
his protest against anything that may in any way resemble communism
or state socialism. Bakunin's conception of a United States of
Europe (the objective of the League and the name of its official publication),
far from constituting an endorsement of the State, renders the existence
of any state, in the accepted sense of the word, impossible. He rejects
the idea of state sovereignty as an attempt at a social organization
devoid of the most complete liberty for individuals as well as associations.
Bakunin also formulated ideas about the nature of man and the relationship
of the individual to society which are only hinted at in the Catechism
but are further developed in his subsequent writings. Bakunin's occasionally
extravagant praise of American democracy in the Northern States can be ascribed
partly to ignorance, but mostly to his passionate sympathy for the North
in the Civil War.
Federalism
We are happy to be able to report that the principle
of federalism has been unanimously acclaimed by the Congress of Geneva....
Unfortunately, this principle has been poorly formulated in the resolutions
of the congress. It has not even been mentioned except indirectly. . . while
in our opinion, it should have taken first place in our declaration of principles.
This is a most regrettable gap which we should hasten to
104 THE ANARCHISM OF MICHAEL BAKUNIN 104
fill. In accordance with the unanimous sense of the Congress of Geneva,
we should proclaim:
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communes, of communes into provinces, of the provinces into nations, and,
finally, of the nations into the United States of Europe first, and of the
entire world eventually.
106 THE ANARCHISM OF MICHAEL BAKUNIN 106
is made in the name of our principles and in the political as well as the
economic interests of the masses, but not with the ambitious intent of founding
a powerful State.
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without wishing to be so, it is a friend of reactionan enemy of
the revolution, i.e., the emancipation of nations and men. The League can
recognize only one unity, that which is freely constituted by the federation
of autonomous parts within the whole, so that the whole, ceasing to be the
negation of private rights and interests, ceasing to be the graveyard where
all local prosperities are buried, becomes the confirmation and the source
of all these autonomies and all these prosperities. The League will therefore
vigorously attack any religious, political, or economic organization which
is not thoroughly penetrated by this great principle of freedom; lacking
that, there is no intelligence, no justice, no prosperity, no humanity.
Such, gentlemen of the League for Peace and Freedom, as we see it and as
you no doubt see it, are the developments and the natural consequences of
that great principle of federalism which the Congress of Geneva has proclaimed.
Such are the absolute conditions for peace and for freedom.
Absolute, yesbut are they the only conditions? We do not think
so.
The Southern states in the great republican confederation of North America
have been, since the Declaration of Independence of the republican states,
democratic par excellence and federalist to the point of wanting secession.
Nevertheless, they have drawn upon themselves the condemnation of all friends
of freedom and humanity in the world, and with the iniquitous and dishonorable
war they fomented against the republican states of the North [the Civil
War], they nearly overthrew and destroyed the finest political organization
that ever existed in history. What could have been the cause of so strange
an event? Was it a political cause? NO, it was entirely social. The internal
political organization of the Southern states was, in certain respects,
even freer than that of the Northern states. It was only that in this magnificent
organization of the Southern states there was a black spot, just as there
was a black spot in the republics of antiquity; the freedom of their citizens
was founded upon the forced labor of slaves. This sufficed to overthrow
the entire existence of these states.
108 THE ANARCHISM OF MICHAEL BAKUNIN 108
Citizens and slavessuch was the antagonism in the ancient world,
as in the slave states of the new world. Citizens and slaves, that is, forced
laborers, slaves not de jure but de facto [not in law but
in fact], such is the antagonism in the modern world. And just as the ancient
states perished through slavery, the modern states will likewise perish
through the proletariat.
It is in vain that we try to console ourselves with the idea that this is
a fictitious rather than a real antagonism, or that it is impossible to
establish a line of demarcation between the owning and the disowned classes,
since these two classes merge through many intermediate imperceptible degrees.
In the world of nature such lines of demarcation do not exist either; in
the ascending scale of life, for instance, it is impossible to indicate
the point at which the vegetable kingdom ends and the animal kingdom starts,
where bestiality ceases and Man begins. Nevertheless, there is a very real
difference between plant and animal, between animal and Man. In human society
likewise, in spite of the intermediate stages which form imperceptible transitions
between one type of political and social life and another, the difference
between classes is nonetheless strongly marked. Anyone can distinguish the
aristocracy of noble birth from the aristocracy of finance, the upper bourgeoisie
from the petty bourgeoisie, the latter from the proletariat of factories
and cities, just as one can distinguish the great landowner, the man who
lives on his income, from the peasant landowner who himself tills the soil,
or the farmer from the landless agricultural laborer.
All these varying types of political and social life may nowadays be reduced
to two main categories, diametrically opposed, and natural enemies to each
other: the political classes, i.e. privileged classes constituting
all those whose privilege stems from land and capital or only from bourgeois
education, and the disinherited working classes, deprived of capital
and land and even elementary schooling.
One would have to be a sophist to deny the existence of the abyss which
separates these two classes today. As in the ancient world, our modern civilization,
which contains a comparatively limited minority of privileged citizens,
is based upon the forced
109 1867 109
labor (forced by hunger) of the immense majority of the population who are
fatally doomed to ignorance and to brutality.
It is in vain, too, that we would try to persuade ourselves that the abyss
could be bridged by the simple diffusion of light among the masses. It is
well enough to set up schools among the masses. It is well enough to set
up schools for the people. But we should also question whether the man of
the people, feeding his family by the day-to-day labor of his hands, himself
deprived of the most elementary schooling and of leisure, dulled and brutalized
by his toilwe should question whether this man has the idea, the
desire, or even the possibility of sending his children to school and supporting
them during the period of their education. Would he not need the help of
their feeble hands, their child labor, to provide for all the needs of his
family? It would be sacrifice enough for him to send to school one or two
of them, and give them hardly enough time to learn a little reading and
writing and arithmetic, and allow their hearts and minds to be tainted with
the Christian catechism which is being deliberately and profusely distributed
in the official public schools of all countrieswould this piddling
bit of schooling ever succeed in lifting the working masses to the level
of bourgeois intelligence? Would it bridge the gap?
Obviously this vital question of primary schooling and higher education
for the people depends upon the solution of the problem, difficult in other
ways, of radical reform in the present economic condition of the working
classes. Improve working conditions, render to labor what is justly due
to labor, and thereby give the people security, comfort, and leisure. Then,
believe me, they will educate themselves; they will create a larger, saner,
higher civilization than this.
It is also in vain that we might say, with the economists, that an improvement
in the economic situation of the working classes depends upon the general
progress of industry and commerce in each country, and their complete emancipation
from the supervision and protection of the State. The freedom of industry
and of commerce is certainly a great thing, and one of the essential foundations
of the future international alliance of all the peoples of
110 THE ANARCHISM OF MICHAEL BAKUNIN 110
the world. As we love freedom, all types of freedom, we should equally love
this. On the other hand, however, we must recognize that so long as the
present states exist, and so long as labor continues to be the slave of
property and of capital, this particular freedom, while it enriches a minimum
portion of the bourgeoisie to the detriment of the immense majority, would
produce one benefit alone; it would further enfeeble and demoralize the
small number of the privileged while increasing the misery, the grievances,
and the just indignation of the working masses, and thereby hasten the hour
of destruction for states.
England, Belgium, France, and Germany are those European countries where
commerce and industry enjoy comparatively the greatest liberty and have
attained the highest degree of development. And it is precisely in these
countries where poverty is felt most cruelly, where the abyss between the
capitalist and the proprietor on the one hand and working classes on the
other seems to have deepened to a degree unknown elsewhere. In Russia, in
the Scandinavian countries, in Italy, in Spain, where commerce and industry
have had but slight development, people seldom die of hunger, except in
cases of extraordinary catastrophe. In England, death from starvation is
a daily occurrence. Nor are those isolated cases; there are thousands, and
tens and hundreds of thousands, who perish. Is it not evident that in the
economic conditions now prevailing in the entire civilized world the
free development of commerce and industry, the marvelous applications of
science to production, even the machines intended to emancipate the worker
by facilitating his toilall
o these inventions, this progress of which civilized man is justly proud,
far from ameliorating the situation of the working classes, only worsen
it and make it still less endurable?
North America alone is still largely an exception to this rule. Yet far
from disproving the rule, this exception actually serves to confirm it.
If the workers in that country are paid more than those in Europe, and if
no one there dies of hunger, and if, at the same time, the antagonism between
classes hardly exists there; if all its workers are citizens and if the
mass of its citizens truly constitutes one single body politic, and if a
good primary and even secondary education is widespread among the masses,
111 1867 111
it should no doubt be largely attributed to that traditional spirit of freedom
which the early colonists brought with them from England. Heightened, tested,
strengthened in the great religious struggles, the principle of individual
independence and of communal and provincial self-government was still
further favored by the rare circumstance that once it was transplanted into
a wilderness, delivered, so to speak, from the obsessions of the past it
could create a new worldthe world of liberty. And liberty is so
great a magician, endowed with so marvelous a power of productivity, that
under the inspiration of this spirit alone, North America was able within
less than a century to equal, and even surpass, the civilization of Europe.
But let us not deceive ourselves: this marvelous progress and this so enviable
prosperity are due in large measure to an important advantage which America
possesses in common with Russia: its immense reaches of fertile land which
even now remain uncultivated for lack of manpower. This great territorial
wealth has been thus far as good as lost for Russia since we have never
had liberty there. It has been otherwise in North America; offering a freedom
which does not exist anywhere else, it attracts every year hundreds of thousands
of energetic, industrious, and intelligent settlers whom it is in a position
to admit because of this wealth. It thereby keeps poverty away and at the
same time staves off the moment when the social question will arise. A worker
who finds no work or is dissatisfied with the wages which capital offers
him can in the last resort always make his way to the Far West and set about
clearing a patch of land in the wilderness.
Since this possibility is always open as a way out for all the workers of
America, it naturally keeps wages high and affords to each an independence
unknown in Europe. This is an advantage; but there is also a disadvantage.
As the good prices for industrial goods are largely due to the good wages
received by labor, American manufacturers are not in a position in most
cases to compete with the European manufacturers. The result is that the
industry of the Northern states finds it necessary to impose a protectionist
tariff. This, however, first brings about the creation of a number of artificial
industries, and particularly the oppression and ruination of the nonmanufacturing
Southern states, which drives
112 THE ANARCHISM OF MICHAEL BAKUNIN 112
hem to call for secession. Finally, the result is the crowding together
in cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and others of masses of
workers who gradually begin to find themselves in a situation analogous
to that of workers in the great manufacturing states of Europe. And, as
a matter of fact, we now see the social question confronting the Northern
states just as t has confronted us a great deal earlier.
We are thus forced to admit that in our modern world the civilization of
the few is still founded, though not as completely s in the days of antiquity,
upon the forced labor and the comparative barbarism of the many. It would
be unjust to say that :his privileged class is a stranger to labor. On the
contrary, in our time they work hard and the number of idle people is diminishing
appreciably. They are beginning to hold work in honor; those who are most
fortunate realize today that one must work hard in order to remain at the
summit of the present civilization and even in order to know how to profit
by one's privileges and retain them. But there is this difference between
the work done by the comfortable classes and that done by the laboring classes:
the former is rewarded in an incomparably greater proportion and affords
the privileged the opportunity for leisure, that ,supreme condition
for all human development, both intellectual and morala condition
never attained by the working classes. Also, the work done in the world
of the privileged is almost :exclusively mental workthe
work involving imagination, memory, the thinking process. The work done
by millions of proletarians, on the other hand, is manual work; often,
as in all factories, for instance, it is work that does not even exercise
man's entire muscular system at one time, but tends to develop one part
of the body to the detriment of all the others, and this labor is generally
performed under conditions harmful to his health and to his harmonious development.
The laborer on the land is in this respect much more fortunate: his nature
is not vitiated by the stifling, often tainted atmosphere of a factory;
it is not deformed by the abnormal development of one of his powers at the
expense of the others; it remains more vigorous, more complete. On the other
hand, his mind is almost always
113 1867 113
slower, more sluggish, and much less developed than that of the worker in
the factories and in the cities.
In sum, workers in the crafts, in the factories, and workers on the land
all represent manual labor, as opposed to the privileged representatives
of mental labor. What is the consequence of this division, not a
fictitious but a real one, which lies at the very foundation of the present
political and social situation?
To the privileged representatives of mental workwho, incidentally,
are not called upon in the present organization of society to represent
their class because they may be the most intelligent, but solely because
they were born into the privileged classto them go all the benefits
as well as all the corruptions of present-day civilization: the wealth,
the luxury, the comfort, the well-being, the sweetness of family life, the
exclusive political liberty with the power to exploit the labor of millions
of workers and to govern them as they please and as profits themall
the inventions, all the refinements of imagination and intellect . . . and,
along with the opportunity for becoming complete men, all the depravities
of a humanity perverted by privilege. As to the representatives of manual
labor, those countless millions of proletarians or even the small landholders,
what is left for them? To them go misery without end, not even the joys
of family lifesince the family soon becomes a burden for the poor
manignorance, barbarity, and we might say even an inescapable
brutality, with the dubious consolation that they serve as a pedestal to
civilization, to the liberty and corruption of the few. Despite this, they
have preserved a freshness of the spirit and of the heart. Morally strengthened
by labor, forced though it may be, they have retained a sense of justice
of quite another kind than the justice of lawgivers and codes. Being miserable
themselves, they keenly sympathize with the misery of others; their common
sense has not been corrupted by the sophisms of a doctrinaire science or
by the mendacity of politicsand since they have not yet abused
life, or even used it, they have faith in life.
But what of the objection that this contrast, this gulf
114 THE ANARCHISM OF MICHAEL BAKUNIN 114
between the small number of the privileged and the vast numbers of the disinherited
has always existed and still exists; just what has changed? It is only that
this gulf used to be filled with the great fog banks of religion, so that
the masses were deceived into thinking there was a common ground for all.
Nowadays, the Great Revolution has begun to sweep the mists away; the masses,
too, are beginning to see the abyss and to ask the reason why. This is a
stupendous realization.
Since the Revolution has confronted the masses with its own gospel, a revelation
not mystical but rational, not of heaven but of earth, not divine but humanthe
gospel of the Rights of Man; since it has proclaimed that all men are equal
and equally entitled to liberty and to a humane lifeever since
then, the masses of people in all Europe, in the entire civilized world,
slowly awakening from the slumber in which Christianity's incantations had
held them enthralled, are beginning to wonder whether they, too, are not
entitled to equality, to liberty, and to their humanity.
From the moment this question was asked, the people everywhere, led by their
admirable good sense as well as by their instinct, have realized that the
first condition for their real emancipation or, if I may be permitted to
use the term, their humanization, was, above all, a radical reform
of their economic condition. The question of daily bread is for them the
principal question, and rightly so, for, as Aristotle has said: Man,
in order to think, to feel freely, to become a man, must be free from worry
about his material sustenance. Furthermore, the bourgeois who
so loudly protest against the materialism of the common people, and who
continually preach to them of abstinence and idealism, know this very well;
they preach by word and not by example.
The second question for the people is that of leisure after labor, a condition
sine qua non for humanity. But bread and leisure can never be made
secure for the masses except through a radical transformation of society
as presently constituted. That is why the Revolution, impelled by its own
logical insistency, has given birth to socialism.
115 1867 115
Socialism
The French Revolution, having proclaimed the right
and the duty of each human individual to become a man, culminated in Babouvism.
Babeufone of the last of the high-principled and energetic citizens
that the Revolution created and then assassinated in such great numbers,
and who had the good fortune to have counted men like Buonarotti among his
friendshad brought together, in a singular concept, the political
traditions of France and the very modern ideas of a social revolution. Disappointed
with the failure of the Revolution to bring about a radical change in society,
he sought to save the spirit of this Revolution by conceiving a political
and social system according to which the republic, the expression of the
collective will of the citizens, would confiscate all individual property
and administer it in the interest of all. Equal portions of such confiscated
property would be allotted to higher education, elementary education, means
of subsistence, entertainment, and each individual, without exception, would
be compelled to perform both muscular and mental labor, each according to
his strength and capacity. Babeuf's conspiracy failed; he was guillotined,
together with some of his old friends. But his ideal of a socialist republic
did not die with him. It was picked up by his friend Buonarotti, the arch-conspirator
of the century, who transmitted it as a sacred trust to future generations.
And thanks to the secret societies Buonarotti founded in Belgium and France,
communist ideas germinated in popular imagination. From 1830 to 1848 they
found able interpreters in Cabet and M. Louis Blanc, who established the
definitive theory of revolutionary socialism. Another socialist movement,
stemming from the same revolutionary source, converging upon the same goal
though by means of entirely different methods, a movement which we should
like to call doctrinaire socialism, was created by two eminent men,
Saint-Simon and Fourier. Saint-Simonianism was interpreted, developed, transformed,
and established as a quasi-practical system, as a church, by Le Pere Enfantin,
with many of his friends who have now become financiers and statesmen, singularly
devoted to the
116 THE ANARCHISM OF MICHAEL BAKUNIN 116
Empire. Fourierism found its commentator in Democratie Pacifique,
edited until December by M. Victor Considerant.
The merit of these two socialist systems, though different in many respects,
lies principally in their profound, scientific, and severe critique of the
present organization of society, whose monstrous contradictions they have
boldly revealed, and also in the very important fact that they have strongly
attacked and subverted Christianity for the sake of rehabilitating our material
existence and human passions, which were maligned and yet so thoroughly
indulged by Christianity's priesthood. The Saint Simonists wanted to replace
Christianity with a new religion based upon the mystical cult of the flesh,
with a new hierarchy of priests, new exploiters of the mob by the privilege
inherent in genius, ability, and talent. The Fourierists, who were much
more democratic, and, we may say, more sincerely so, envisioned their phalansteries
as governed and administered by leaders elected by universal suffrage, where
everyone, they thought, would personally find his own work and his own place
in accordance with the nature of his own feelings.
The defects of Saint-Simonianism are too obvious to need discussion. The
twofold error of the Saint-Simonists consisted, first, in their sincere
belief that though their powers of persuasion and their pacific propaganda
they would succeed in so touching the hearts of the rich that these would
willingly give their surplus wealth to the phalansteries; and, secondly,
in their belief that it was possible, theoretically, a priori, to construct
a social paradise where all future humanity would come to rest. They had
not understood that while we might enunciate the great principles of humanity's
future development, we should leave it to the experience of the future to
work out the practical realization of such principles.
In general, regulation was the common passion of all the socialists of the
pre-l848 era, with one exception only. Cabet, Louis Blanc, the Fourierists,
the Saint-Simonists, all were inspired by a passion for indoctrinating and
organizing the future; they all were more or less authoritarians. The exception
is Proudhon.
The son of a peasant, and thus instinctively a hundred times more revolutionary
than all the doctrinaire and bourgeois social
117 1867 117
ists, Proudhon armed himself with a critique as profound and penetrating
as it was merciless, in order to destroy their systems. Resisting authority
with liberty, against those state socialists, he boldly proclaimed himself
an anarchist; defying their deism or their pantheism, he had the courage
to call himself simply an atheist or rather, with Auguste Comte, a positivist.
His own socialism was based upon liberty, both individual and collective,
and on the spontaneous action of free associations obeying no laws other
than the general laws of social economy, already known and yet to be discovered
by social science, free from all governmental regulation and state protection.
This socialism subordinated politics to the economic, intellectual, and
moral interests of society. It subsequently, by its own logic, culminated
in federalism.
Such was the state of social science prior to 1848. The polemics of the
left carried on in the newspapers, circulars, and socialist brochures brought
a mass of new ideas to the working classes. They were saturated with this
material and, when the 1848 revolution broke out, the power of socialism
became manifest.
Socialism, we have said, was the latest offspring of the Great Revolution;
but before producing it, the revolution had already brought forth a more
direct heir, its oldest, the beloved child of Robespierre and the followers
of Saint-Justpure republicanism, without any admixture
of socialist ideas, resuscitated from antiquity and inspired by the heroic
traditions of the great citizens of Greece and Rome. As it was far less
humanitarian than socialism, it hardly knew man, and recognized the citizen
only. And while socialism seeks to found a republic of men, all that
republicanism wants is a republic of citizens, even though the citizensas
in the constitutions which necessarily succeeded the constitution of 1793
in consequence of that first constitution's deliberately ignoring the social
questioneven though the citizens, I say, by virtue of being active
citizens, to borrow an expression from the Constituent Assembly, were
to base their civic privilege upon the exploitation of the labor of passive
citizens. Besides, the political republican is not at all egotistic
in his own behalf, or at least is not supposed to be so; he must be an egotist
in behalf of his fatherland which he must value above
118 THE ANARCHISM OF MICHAEL BAKUNIN 118
himself, above all other individuals, all nations, all humanity. Consequently,
he will always ignore international justice; in all debates, whether his
country be right or wrong, he will always give it first place. He will want
it always to dominate and to crush all the foreign nations by its power
and glory. Through natural inclination he will become fond of conquest,
in spite of the fact that the experience of centuries may have proved to
him that military triumphs must inevitably lead to Caesarism.
The socialist republican detests the grandeur, the power, and the military
glory of the State. He sets liberty and the general welfare above them.
A federalist in the internal affairs of the country, he desires an international
confederation, first of all in the spirit of justice, and second because
he is convinced that the economic and social revolution, transcending all
the artificial and pernicious barriers between states, can only be brought
about, in part at least, by the solidarity in action, if not of all, then
at least of the majority of the nations constituting the civilized world
today, so that sooner or later all the nations must join together.
The strictly political republican is a stoic; he recognizes no rights for
himself but only duties; or, as in Mazzini's republic, he claims one right
only for himself, that of eternal devotion to his country, of living only
to serve it, and of joyfully sacrificing himself and even dying for it,
as in the song Dumas dedicated to the Girondins: To die for one's
country is the finest, the most enviable fate.
The socialist, on the contrary, insists upon his positive rights to life
and to all of its intellectual, moral, and physical joys. He loves life,
and he wants to enjoy it in all its abundance. Since his convictions are
part of himself, and his duties to society are indissolubly linked with
his rights, he will, in order to remain faithful to both, manage to live
in accordance with justice like Proudhon and, if necessary, die like Babeuf.
But he will never say that the life of humanity should be a sacrifice or
that death is the sweetest fate.
Liberty, to the political republican, is an empty word; it is the liberty
of a willing slave, a devoted victim of the State. Being always ready to
sacrifice his own liberty, he will willingly sacrifice
119 1867 119
the liberty of others. Political republicanism, therefore, necessarily leads
to despotism. For the socialist republican, liberty linked with the general
welfare, producing a humanity of all through the humanity of each, is everything,
while the State, in his eyes, is a mere instrument, a servant of his well-being
and of everyone's liberty. The socialist is distinguished from the bourgeois
by justice, since he demands for himself nothing but the real fruit
of his own labor. He is distinguished from the strict republican by his
frank and human egotism; he lives for himself, openly and without
fine-sounding phrases. He knows that in so living his life, in accordance
with justice, he serves the entire society, and, in so serving it, he
also finds his own welfare. The republican is rigid; often, in consequence
of his patriotism, he is cruel, as the priest is often made cruel by his
religion. The socialist is natural; he is moderately patriotic, but nevertheless
always very human. In a word, between the political republican and the socialist
republican there is an abyss; the one, as a quasi-religious phenomenon,
belongs to the past; the other, whether positivist or atheist,
belongs to the future.
The natural antagonism of these two kinds of republican came plainly into
view in 1848. From the very first hours of the Revolution, they no longer
understood each other; their ideals, all their instincts, drew them in diametrically
opposite directions. The entire period from February to June was spent in
skirmishes which, carrying the civil war into the camp of the revolutionaries
and paralyzing their forces, naturally strengthened the already formidable
coalition of all kinds of reactionaries; fear soon welded them into one
single party. In June the republicans, in their turn, formed a coalition
with the reaction in order to crush the socialists. They thought they had
won a victory, yet they pushed their beloved republic down into the abyss.
General Cavaignac, the flagbearer of the reaction, was the precursor of
Napoleon III. Everybody realized this at the time, if not in France then
certainly everywhere else, for this disastrous victory of the republicans
against the workers of Paris was celebrated as a great triumph in all the
courts of Europe, and the officers of the Prussian Guards, led by their
generals, hastened to convey their fraternal congratulations to General
Cavaignac.
120 THE ANARCHISM OF MICHAEL BAKUNIN 120
Terrified of the red phantom, the bourgeoisie of Europe permitted itself
to fall into absolute serfdom. BY nature critical and liberal, the middle
class is not fond of the military, but, facing the threatening dangers of
a popular emancipation, it chose militarism. Having sacrificed its dignity
and all its glorious conquests of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
it fancied that it had at least the peace and tranquillity necessary for
the success of its commercial and industrial transactions. We
are sacrificing our liberty to you, it seemed to be saying to
the military powers who again rose upon the ruins of this third revolution.
Let us, in return, peacefully exploit the labor of the masses,
and protect us against their demands, which may appear theoretically legitimate
but which are detestable so far as our interests are concerned.
The military, in turn, promised the bourgeoisie everything; they even kept
their word. Why, then, is the bourgeoisie, the entire bourgeoisie of Europe,
generally discontented today?
The bourgeoisie had not reckoned with the fact that a military regime is
very costly, that through its internal organization alone it paralyzes,
it upsets, it ruins nations, and moreover, obeying its own intrinsic and
inescapable logic, it has never failed to bring on war; dynastic
wars, wars of honor, wars of conquest or wars of national frontiers, wars
of equilibrium destruction and unending absorption of states by
other states, rivers of human blood, a fire-ravaged countryside, ruined
cities, the devastation of entire provincesall this for the sake
of satisfying the ambitions of princes and their favorites, to enrich them
to occupy territories, to discipline populations, and to fill the pages
of history.
Now the bourgeoisie understands these things, and that is why it is dissatisfied
with the military regime it has helped so much to create. It is indeed weary
of these drawbacks, but what is it going to put in the place of things as
they are?
Constitutional monarchy has seen its day, and, anyway, it has never prospered
too well on the European continent. Even in England, that historic cradle
of modern institutionalism, battered by the rising democracy it is shaken,
it totters, and will
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soon be unable to contain the gathering surge of popular passions and demands.
A republic? What kind of republic? Is it to be political only, or democratic
and social? Are the people still socialist? Yes, more than ever.
What succumbed in June 1848 was not socialism in general. It was only state
socialism, authoritarian and regimented socialism, the kind that had
believed and hoped that the State would fully satisfy the needs and the
legitimate aspirations of the working classes, and that the State, armed
with its omnipotence, would and could inaugurate a new social order. Hence
it was not socialism that died in June; it was rather the State which declared
its bankruptcy toward socialism and, proclaiming itself incapable of paying
its debt to socialism, sought the quickest way out by killing its creditor.
It did not succeed in killing socialism but it did kill the faith that socialism
had placed in it. It also, at the same time, annihilated all the theories
of authoritarian or doctrinaire socialism, some of which, like L'Icarie
by Cabet, and like L'Organisation du Travail by Louis Blanc, had
advised the people to rely in all things upon the Statewhile others
demonstrated their worthlessness through a series of ridiculous experiments.
Even Proudhon's bank, which could have prospered in happier circumstances,
was crushed by the strictures and the general hostility of the bourgeoisie.
Socialism lost this first battle for a very simple reason. Although it was
rich in instincts and in negative theoretical ideas, which gave it full
justification in its fight against privilege, it lacked the necessary positive
and practical ideas for erecting a new system upon the ruins of the bourgeois
order, the system of popular justice. The workers who fought in June 1848
for the emancipation of the people were united by instinct, not by ideasand
such confused ideas as they did possess formed a tower of Babel, a chaos,
which could produce nothing. Such was the main cause of their defeat. Must
we, for this reason, hold in doubt the future itself, and the present strength
of socialism? Christianity, which had set as its goal the creation of the
kingdom of justice in heaven, needed several centuries to triumph in
122 THE ANARCHISM OF MICHAEL BAKUNIN 122
Europe. Is there any cause for surprise if socialism, which has set itself
a more difficult problem, that of creating the kingdom of justice on earth,
has not triumphed within a few years?
Is it necessary to prove that socialism is not dead? We need only see what
is going on all over Europe today. Behind all the diplomatic gossip, behind
the noises of war which have filled Europe since 1852, what serious question
is facing all the countries if it is not the social question? It alone is
the great unknown; everyone senses its coming, everyone trembles at the
thought, no one dares speak of itbut it speaks for itself, and
in an ever louder voice. The cooperative associations of the workers, these
mutual aid banks and labor credit banks, these trade unions, and this international
league of workers in all the countriesall this rising movement
of workers in England, in France, in Belgium, in Germany, in Italy, and
in Switzerlanddoes it not prove that they have not in any way
given up their goal, nor lost faith in their coming emancipation? Does it
not prove that they have also understood that in order to hasten the hour
of their deliverance they should not rely on the States, nor on the more
or less hypocritical assistance of the privileged classes, but rather upon
themselves and their independent, completely spontaneous associations?
In most of the countries of Europe, this movement, which, in appearance
at least, is alien to politics, still preserves an exclusively economic
and, so to say, private character. But in England it has already placed
itself squarely in the stormy domain of politics. Having organized itself
in a formidable association, The Reform League, it has already won a great
victory against the politically organized privilege of the aristocracy and
the upper bourgeoisie. The Reform League, with a characteristically British
patience and practical tenacity, has outlined a plan for its campaign; it
is not too straitlaced about anything, it is not easily frightened, it will
not be stopped by any obstacle. Within ten years at most,
they say, and even against the greatest odds, we shall have universal
suffrage, and then . . . then we will make the social revolution!
In France, as in Germany, as socialism quietly proceeded along the road
of private economic associations, it has already
123 1867 123
achieved so high a degree of power among the working classes that Napoleon
III on the one side and Count Bismarck on the other are beginning to seek
an alliance with it. In Italy and in Spain, after the deplorable fiasco
of all their political parties, and in the face of the terrible misery into
which both countries are plunged, all other problems will soon be absorbed
in the economic and social question. As for Russia and Poland, is there
really any other question facing these countries? It is this question which
has just extinguished the last hopes of the old, noble, historic Poland;
it is this question which is threatening and which will destroy the pestiferous
Empire of All the Russias, now tottering to its fall. Even in America, has
not socialism been made manifest in the proposition by a man of eminence,
Mr. Charles Sumner, Senator from Massachusetts, to distribute lands to the
emancipated Negroes of the Southern states?
You can very well see, then, that socialism is everywhere, and that in spite
of its June defeat it has by force of underground work slowly infiltrated
the political life of all countries, and succeeded to the point of being
felt everywhere as the latent force of the century. Another few years and
it will reveal itself as an active, formidable power.
With very few exceptions, almost all the peoples of Europe, some even unfamiliar
with the term socialism, are socialist today. They know
no other banner but that which proclaims their economic emancipation ahead
of all else; they would a thousand times rather renounce any question but
that. Hence it is only through socialism that they can be drawn into politics,
a good politics.
Is it not enough to say, gentlemen, that we may not exclude socialism from
our program, and that we could not leave it out without dooming all our
work to impotence? By our program, by declaring ourselves federalist republicans,
we have shown ourselves to be revolutionary enough to alienate a good part
of the bourgeoisie, all those who speculate upon the misery and the misfortunes
of the masses and who even find something to gain in the great catastrophes
which beset the nations more than ever today. If we set aside this busy,
bustling, intriguing, speculating section of the bourgeoisie, we shall still
keep the majority of
124 THE ANARCHISM OF MICHAEL BAKUNIN 124
decent, industrious bourgeois, who occasionally do some harm by necessity
rather than willfully or by preference, and who would want nothing better
than to be delivered from this fatal necessity, which places them in a state
of permanent hostility toward the working masses and, at the same time,
ruins them. We might truthfully say that the petty bourgeoisie, small business,
and small industry are now beginning to suffer almost as much as the working
classes, and if things go on at the same rate, this respectable bourgeois
majority could well, through its economic position, soon merge with the
proletariat. It is being destroyed and pushed downward into the abyss by
big commerce, big industry, and especially by large-scale, unscrupulous
speculators. The position of the petty bourgeoisie, therefore, is growing
more and more revolutionary; its ideas, which for so long a time had been
reactionary, have been clarified through these disastrous experiences and
must necessarily take the opposite course. The more intelligent among them
are beginning to realize that for the decent bourgeoisie the only salvation
lies in an alliance with the peopleand that the social question
is as important to them, and in the same way, as to the people.
This progressive change in the thinking of the petty bourgeoisie in Europe
is a fact as cheering as it is incontestable. But we should be under no
illusion; the initiative for the new development will not belong to the
bourgeoisie but to the peoplein the West, to the workers in the
factories and the cities; in our country, in Russia, in Poland, and in most
of the Slav countries, to the peasants. The petty bourgeoisie has grown
too fearful, too timid, too skeptical to take any initiative alone. It will
let itself be drawn in, but it will not draw in anyone, for while it is
poor in ideas, it also lacks the faith and the passion. This passion, which
annihilates obstacles and creates new worlds, is to be found in the people
only. Therefore, the initiative for the new movement will unquestionably
belong to the people. And are we going to repudiate the people? Are we going
to stop talking about socialism, which is the new religion of the people?
But socialism, they tell us, shows an inclination to ally itself with Caesarism.
In the first place, this is a calumny; it is
125 1867 125
Caesarism, on the contrary, which, on seeing the menacing power of socialism
rising on the horizon, solicits its favors in order to exploit it in its
own way. But is not this still another reason for us to work for socialism,
in order to prevent this monstrous alliance, which would without doubt be
the greatest misfortune that could threaten the liberty of the world?
We should work for it even apart from all practical considerations, because
socialism is justice. When we speak of justice we do not thereby
mean the justice which is imparted to us in legal codes and by Roman law,
founded for the most part on acts of force and violence consecrated by time
and by the blessings of some church, Christian or pagan and, as such, accepted
as an absolute, the rest being nothing but the logical consequence of the
same. I speak of that justice which is based solely upon human conscience,
the justice which you will rediscover deep in the conscience of every man,
even in the conscience of the child, and which translates itself into simple
equality.
This justice, which is so universal but which nevertheless, owing to the
encroachments of force and to the influence of religion, has never as yet
prevailed in the world of politics, of law, or of economics, should serve
as a basis for the new world. Without it there is no liberty, no republic,
no prosperity, no peace! It should therefore preside at all our resolutions
in order that we may effectively cooperate in establishing peace.
This justice bids us take into our hands the people's cause, so miserably
maltreated until now, and to demand in its behalf economic and social emancipation,
together with political liberty.
We do not propose to you, gentlemen, one or another socialist system. What
we ask of you is to proclaim once more that great principle of the French
Revolution: that every man is entitled to the material and moral means for
the development of his complete humanitya principle which, we
believe, translates itself into the following mandate:
To organize society in such a manner that every individual endowed with
life, man or woman, may and almost equal means for the development of his
various faculties and for their utilization in his labor; to organize
a society which, while it makes it impossible for any individual whatsoever
to exploit the labor
126 THE ANARCHISM OF MICHAEL BAKUNIN 126
of others, will not allow anyone to share in the enjoyment of social wealth,
always produced by labor only, unless he has himself contributed to its
creation with his own labor.
The complete solution of this problem will no doubt be the work of centuries.
But history has set the problem before us, and we can now no longer evade
it if we are not to resign ourselves to total impotence.
We hasten to add that we energetically reject any attempt at a social organization
devoid of the most complete liberty for individuals as well as associations,
and one that would call for the establishment of a ruling authority of any
nature whatsoever, and that, in the name of this libertywhich
we recognize as the only basis for, and the only legitimate creator of,
any organization, economic or politicalwe shall always protest
against anything that may in any way resemble communism or state socialism.
The only thing we believe the State can and should do is to change the law
of inheritance, gradually at first, until it is entirely abolished as soon
as possible. Since the right of inheritance is a purely arbitrary creation
of the State, and one of the essential conditions for the very existence
of the authoritarian and divinely sanctioned State, it can and must be abolished
by libertywhich again means that the State itself must accomplish
its own dissolution in a society freely organized in accordance with justice.
This right must necessarily be abolished, we believe, for as long as inheritance
is in effect, there will be hereditary economic inequality, not the
natural inequality of individuals but the artificial inequality of classesand
this will necessarily always lead to the hereditary inequality of the development
and cultivation of mental faculties, and continue to be the source and the
consecration of all political and social inequalities. Equality from the
moment life beginsinsofar as this equality depends on the economic
and political organization of society, and in order that everyone, in accordance
with his own natural capacities, may become the heir and the product of
his own laborthis is the problem which justice sets before us.
We believe that the public funds for the education and elementary schooling
of all children of both sexes, as well as their mainte
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nance from birth until they come of age, should be the sole inheritors of
all the deceased. As Slavs and Russians, we may add that for us the social
idea, based upon the general and traditional instinct of our populations,
is that the earth, the property of all the people, should be owned only
by those who cultivate it with the labor of their own hands.
We are convinced that this principle is a just one, that it is an essential
and indispensable condition for any serious social reform, and hence that
Western Europe, too, cannot fail to accept and recognize it, in spite of
all the difficulties its realization may encounter in certain countries.
In France, for instance, the majority of the peasants already own their
land; most of these same peasants, however, will soon come to own nothing,
because of the parceling out which is the inevitable result of the politico-economic
system now prevailing in that country. We are making no proposal on this
point, and indeed we refrain, in general, from making any proposals, dealing
with any particular problem of social science or politics. We are convinced
that all these questions should be seriously and thoroughly discussed in
our journal. We shall today confine ourselves to proposing that you make
the following declaration:
As we are convinced that the real attainment of liberty, of justice,
and of peace in the world will be impossible so long as the immense majority
of the populations are dispossessed of property, deprived of education and
condemned to political and social nonbeing and a de facto if not a de jure
slavery, through their state of misery as well as their need to labor without
rest or leisure, in producing all the wealth in which the world is glorying
today, and receiving in return but a small portion hardly sufficient for
their daily bread;
As we are convinced that for all these populations, hitherto so terribly
maltreated through the centuries, the question of bread is the question
of intellectual emancipation, of liberty, and of humanity;
As we are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice;
and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality;
128 THE ANARCHISM OF MICHAEL BAKUNIN 128
Now therefore, the League highly proclaims the need for a radical social
and economic reform, whose aim shall be the deliverance of the people's
labor from the yoke of capital and property, upon a foundation of the strictest
justicenot juridical, not theological, not metaphysical, but simply
human justice, of positive science and the most absolute liberty.
The League at the same time decides that its journal will freely open its
columns to all serious discussions of economic and social questions, provided
they are sincerely inspired by a desire for the greatest popular emancipation,
both on the material and the political and intellectual levels.
Rousseau's Theory of the State
. . . We have said that man is not only the most
individualistic being on earthhe is also the most social.
It was a great mistake on the part of Jean Jacques Rousseau to have thought
that primitive society was established through a free agreement among savages.
But Jean Jacques is not the only one to have said this. The majority of
jurists and modern publicists, either of the school of Kant or any other
individualist and liberal school, those who do not accept the idea of a
society founded upon the divine right of the theologians nor of a society
determined by the Hegelian school as a more or less mystical realization
of objective morality, nor of the naturalists' concept of a primitive animal
society, all accept, nolens volens, and for lack of any other basis,
the tacit agreement or contract as their starting point.
According to the theory of the social contract primitive men enjoying absolute
liberty only in isolation are antisocial by nature. When forced to associate
they destroy each other's freedom. If this struggle is unchecked it can
lead to mutual extermination. In order not to destroy each other completely,
they conclude a contract, formal or tacit, whereby they surrender
some of their freedom to assure the rest. This contract becomes the foundation
of society, or rather of the State, for we must point out that in this theory
there is no place for society; only the State exists, or rather society
is completely absorbed by the State.
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Society is the natural mode of existence of the human collectivity,
independent of any contract. It governs itself through the customs or the
traditional habits, but never by laws. It progresses slowly, under the impulsion
it receives from individual initiatives and not through the thinking or
the will of the lawgiver. There are a good many laws which govern it without
its being aware of them, but these are natural laws, inherent in the body
social, just as physical laws are inherent in material bodies. Most of these
laws remain unknown to this day; nevertheless, they have governed human
society ever since its birth, independent of the thinking and the will of
the men composing the society. Hence they should not be confused with the
political and juridical laws proclaimed by some legislative power, laws
that are supposed to be the logical sequelae of the first contract consciously
formed by men.
The state is in no wise an immediate product of nature. Unlike society,
it does not precede the awakening of reason in men. The liberals say that
the first state was created by the free and rational will of men; the men
of the right consider it the work of God. In either case it dominates society
and tends to absorb it completely.
One might rejoin that the State, representing as it does the public welfare
or the common interest of all, curtails a part of the liberty of each only
for the sake of assuring to him all the remainder. But this remainder may
be a form of security; it is never liberty. Liberty is indivisible; one
cannot curtail a part of it without killing all of it. This little part
you are curtailing is the very essence of my liberty; it is all of it. Through
a natural, necessary, and irresistible movement, all of my liberty is concentrated
precisely in the part, small as it may be, which you curtail. It is the
story of Bluebeard's wife, who had an entire palace at her disposal, with
full and complete liberty to enter everywhere, to see and to touch everything,
except for one dreadful little chamber which her terrible husband's sovereign
will had forbidden her to open on pain of death. Well, she turned away from
all the splendors of the palace, and her entire being concentrated on the
dreadful little chamber. She opened that forbidden door, for good reason,
since her liberty depended on her
130 THE ANARCHISM OF MICHAEL BAKUNIN 130
doing so, while the prohibition to enter was a flagrant violation of precisely
that liberty. It is also the story of Adam and Eve's fall. The prohibition
to taste the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for
no other reason than that such was the will of the Lord, was an act of atrocious
despotism on the part of the good Lord. Had our first parents obeyed it,
the entire human race would have remained plunged in the most humiliating
slavery. Their disobedience has emancipated and saved us. Theirs, in the
language of mythology, was the first act of human liberty.
But, one might say, could the State, the democratic State, based upon the
free suffrage of all its citizens, be the negation of their liberty? And
why not? That would depend entirely on the mission and the power that the
citizens surrendered to the State. A republican State, based upon universal
suffrage, could be very despotic, more despotic even than the monarchical
State, if, under the pretext of representing everybody's will, it were to
bring down the weight of its collective power upon the will and the free
movement of each of its members.
However, suppose one were to say that the State does not restrain the liberty
of its members except when it tends toward injustice or evil. It prevents
its members from killing each other, plundering each other, insulting each
other, and in general from hurting each other, while it leaves them full
liberty to do good. This brings us back to the story of Bluebeard's wife,
or the story of the forbidden fruit: what is good? what is evil?
From the standpoint of the system we have under examination, the distinction
between good and evil did not exist before the conclusion of the contract,
when each individual stayed deep in the isolation of his liberty or of his
absolute rights, having no consideration for his fellowmen except those
dictated by his relative weakness or strength; that is, his own prudence
and self-interest. At that time, still following the same theory, egotism
was the supreme law, the only right. The good was determined by success,
failure was the only evil, and justice was merely the consecration of the
fait accompli, no matter how horrible, how cruel or infamous, exactly
as things are now in the political morality which prevails in Europe today.
131 1867 131
The distinction between good and evil, according to this system, commences
only with the conclusion of the social contract. Thereafter, what was recognized
as constituting the common interest was proclaimed as good, and all that
was contrary to it as evil. The contracting members, on becoming citizens,
and bound by a more or less solemn undertaking, thereby assumed an obligation:
to subordinate their private interests to the common good, to an interest
inseparable from all others. Their own rights were separated from the public
right, the sole representative of which, the State, was thereby invested
with the power to repress all illegal revolts of the individual, but also
with the obligation to protect each of its members in the exercise of his
rights insofar as these were not contrary to the common right.
We shall now examine what the State, thus constituted, should be in relation
to other states, its peers, as well as in relation to its own subject populations.
This examination appears to us all the more interesting and useful because
the State, as it is here defined, is precisely the modern State insofar
as it has separated itself from the religious ideathe secular
or atheist State proclaimed by modern publicists. Let us see, then:
of what does its morality consist? It is the modern State, we have said,
at the moment when it has freed itself from the yoke of the Church, and
when it has, consequently, shaken off the yoke of the universal or cosmopolitan
morality of the Christian religion; at the moment when it has not yet been
penetrated by the humanitarian morality or idea, which, by the way, it could
never do without destroying itself; for, in its separate existence and isolated
concentration, it would be too narrow to embrace, to contain the interests
and therefore the morality of all mankind.
Modern states have reached precisely this point. Christianity serves them
only as a pretext or a phrase or as a means of deceiving the idle mob, for
they pursue goals which have nothing to do with religious sentiments. The
great statesmen of our days, the Palmerstons, the Muravievs, the Cavours,
the Bismarcks, the Napoleons, had a good laugh when people took their religious
pronouncements seriously. They laughed harder when people attributed humanitarian
sentiments, considerations, and
132 THE ANARCHISM OF MICHAEL BAKUNIN 132
intentions to them, but they never made the mistake of treating these ideas
in public as so much nonsense. Just what remains to constitute their morality?
The interest of the State, and nothing else. From this point of view, which,
incidentally, with very few exceptions, has been that of the statesmen,
the strong men of all times and of all countriesfrom this
point of view, I say, whatever conduces to the preservation, the grandeur
and the power of the State, no matter how sacrilegious or morally revolting
it may seem, that is the good. And conversely, whatever opposes the
State's interests, no matter how holy or just otherwise, that is evil.
Such is the secular morality and practice of every State.
It is the same with the State founded upon the theory of the social contract.
According to this principle, the good and the just commence only with the
contract; they are, in fact, nothing but the very contents and the purpose
of the contract; that is, the common interest and the public right
of all the individuals who have formed the contract among themselves, with
the exclusion of all those who remain outside the contract. It is, consequently,
nothing but the greatest satisfaction given to the collective egotism
of a special and restricted association, which, being founded upon the
partial sacrifice of the individual egotism of each of its members, rejects
from its midst, as strangers and natural enemies, the immense majority of
the human species, whether or not it may be organized into analogous associations.
The existence of one sovereign, exclusionary State necessarily supposes
the existence and, if need be, provokes the formation of other such States,
since it is quite natural that individuals who find themselves outside it
and are threatened by it in their existence and in their liberty, should,
in their turn, associate themselves against it. We thus have humanity divided
into an indefinite number of foreign states, all hostile and threatened
by each other. There is no common right, no social contract of any kind
between them; otherwise they would cease to be independent states and become
the federated members of one great state. But unless this great state were
to embrace all of humanity, it would be confronted with other great states,
each federated within, each maintaining the same posture of inevitable hostility.
133 1867 133
War would still remain the supreme law, an unavoidable condition of human
survival.
Every state, federated or not, would therefore seek to become the most powerful.
It must devour lest it be devoured, conquer lest it be conquered, enslave
lest it be enslaved, since two powers, similar and yet alien to each other,
could not coexist without mutual destruction.
The State, therefore, is the most flagrant, the most cynical, and the
most complete negation of humanity. It shatters the universal solidarity
of all men on the earth, and brings some of them into association only for
the purpose of destroying, conquering, and enslaving all the rest. It protects
its own citizens only; it recognizes human rights, humanity, civilization
within its own confines alone. Since it recognizes no rights outside itself,
it logically arrogates to itself the right to exercise the most ferocious
inhumanity toward all foreign populations, which it can plunder, exterminate,
or enslave at will. If it does show itself generous and humane toward them,
it is never through a sense of duty, for it has no duties except to itself
in the first place, and then to those of its members who have freely formed
it, who freely continue to constitute it or even, as always happens in the
long run, those who have become its subjects. As there is no international
law in existence, and as it could never exist in a meaningful and realistic
way without undermining to its foundations the very principle of the absolute
sovereignty of the State, the State can have no duties toward foreign
populations. Hence, if it treats a conquered people in a humane fashion,
if it plunders or exterminates it halfway only, if it does not reduce it
to the lowest degree of slavery, this may be a political act inspired by
prudence, or even by pure magnanimity, but it is never done from a sense
of duty, for the State has an absolute right to dispose of a conquered people
at will.
This flagrant negation of humanity which constitutes the very essence of
the State is, from the standpoint of the State, its supreme duty and its
greatest virtue. It bears the name patriotism, and it constitutes
the entire transcendent morality of the State. We call it transcendent
morality because it usually goes
134 THE ANARCHISM OF MICHAEL BAKUNIN 134
beyond the level of human morality and justice, either of the community
or of the private individual, and by that same token often finds itself
in contradiction with these. Thus, to offend, to oppress, to despoil, to
plunder, to assassinate or enslave one's fellowman is ordinarily regarded
as a crime. In public life, on the other hand, from the standpoint of patriotism,
when these things are done for the greater glory of the State, for the preservation
or the extension of its power, it is all transformed into duty and virtue.
And this virtue, this duty, are obligatory for each patriotic citizen; everyone
is supposed to exercise them not against foreigners only but against one's
own fellow citizens, members or subjects of the State like himself, whenever
the welfare of the State demands it.
This explains why, since the birth of the State, the world of politics has
always been and continues to be the stage for unlimited rascality and brigandage,
brigandage and rascality which, by the way, are held in high esteem, since
they are sanctified by patriotism, by the transcendent morality and the
supreme interest of the State. This explains why the entire history of ancient
and modern states is merely a series of revolting crimes; why kings and
ministers, past and present, of all times and all countriesstatesmen,
diplomats, bureaucrats, and warriorsif judged from the standpoint
of simple morality and human justice, have a hundred, a thousand times over
earned their sentence to hard labor or to the gallows. There is no horror,
no cruelty, sacrilege, or perjury, no imposture, no infamous transaction,
no cynical robbery, no bold plunder or shabby betrayal that has not been
or is not daily being perpetrated by the representatives of the states,
under no other pretext than those elastic words, so convenient and yet so
terrible: for reasons of state.
These are truly terrible words, for they have corrupted and dishonored,
within official ranks and in society's ruling classes, more men than has
even Christianity itself. No sooner are these words uttered than all grows
silent, and everything ceases; honesty, honor, justice, right, compassion
itself ceases, and with it logic and good sense. Black turns white, and
white turns black. The lowest human acts, the basest felonies, the most
atrocious crimes become meritorious acts.
135 1867 135
The great Italian political philosopher Machiavelli was the first to use
these words, or at least the first to give them their true meaning and the
immense popularity they still enjoy among our rulers today. A realistic
and positive thinker if there ever was one, he was the first to understand
that the great and powerful states could be founded and maintained by crime
aloneby many great crimes, and by a radical contempt for all that
goes under the name of honesty. He has written, explained, and proven these
facts with terrifying frankness. And, since the idea of humanity was entirely
unknown in his time; since the idea of fraternity not human but
religiousas preached by the Catholic Church, was at that time,
as it always has been, nothing but a shocking irony, belied at every step
by the Church's own actions; since in his time no one even suspected that
there was such a thing as popular right, since the people had always been
considered an inert and inept mass, the flesh of the State to be molded
and exploited at will, pledged to eternal obedience; since there was absolutely
nothing in his time, in Italy or elsewhere, except for the StateMachiavelli
concluded from these facts, with a good deal of logic, that the State was
the supreme goal of all human existence, that it must be served at any cost
and that, since the interest of the State prevailed over everything else,
a good patriot should not recoil from any crime in order to serve it. He
advocates crime, he exhorts to crime, and makes it the sine qua non
of political intelligence as well as of true patriotism. Whether the State
bear the name of a monarchy or of a republic, crime will always be necessary
for its preservation and its triumph. The State will doubtless change its
direction and its object, but its nature will remain the same: always the
energetic, permanent violation of justice, compassion, and honesty, for
the welfare of the State.
Yes, Machiavelli is right. We can no longer doubt it after an experience
of three and a half centuries added to his own experience. Yes, so all history
tells us: while the small states are virtuous only because of their weakness,
the powerful states sustain themselves by crime alone. But our conclusion
will be entirely different from his, for a very simple reason. We are the
children of the Revolution, and from it we have inherited the
136 THE ANARCHISM OF MICHAEL BAKUNIN 136
religion of humanity, which we must found upon the ruins of the religion
of divinity. We believe in the rights of man, in the dignity and the necessary
emancipation of the human species. We believe in human liberty and human
fraternity founded upon justice. In a word, we believe in the triumph of
humanity upon the earth. But this triumph, which we summon with all our
longing, which we want to hasten with all our united efforts since
it is by its very nature the negation of the crime which is intrinsically
the negation of humanitythis triumph cannot be achieved until
crime ceases to be what it now is more or less everywhere today, the
real basis of the political existence of the nations absorbed and dominated
by the ideas of the State. And since it is now proven that no state
could exist without committing crimes, or at least without contemplating
and planning them, even when its impotence should prevent it from perpetrating
crimes, we today conclude in favor of the absolute need of destroying
the states. Or, if it is so decided, their radical and complete transformation
so that, ceasing to be powers centralized and organized from the top down,
by violence or by authority of some principle, they may recognizewith
absolute liberty for all the parties to unite or not to unite, and with
liberty for each of these always to leave a union even when freely entered
intofrom the bottom up, according to the real needs and the natural
tendencies of the parties, through the free federation of individuals, associations,
communes, districts, provinces, and nations within humanity.
Such are the conclusions to which we are inevitably led by an examination
of the external relations which the so-called free states maintain with
other states. Let us now examine the relations maintained by the State founded
upon the free contract arrived at among its own citizens or subjects.
We have already observed that by excluding the immense majority of the human
species from its midst, by keeping this majority outside the reciprocal
engagements and duties of morality, of justice, and of right, the State
denies humanity and, using that sonorous word patriotism, imposes injustice
and cruelty as a supreme duty upon all its subjects. It restricts, it mutilates,
it kills humanity in them, so that by ceasing to be
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men, they may be solely citizensor rather, and more specifically,
that through the historic connection and succession of facts, they may never
rise above the citizen to the height of being man.
We have also seen that every state, under pain of destruction and fearing
to be devoured by its neighbor states, must reach out toward omnipotence,
and, having become powerful, must conquer. Who speaks of conquest speaks
of peoples conquered, subjugated, reduced to slavery in whatever form or
denomination. Slavery, therefore, is the necessary consequence of the very
existence of the State.
Slavery may change its form or its nameits essence remains the
same. Its essence may be expressed in these words: to be a slave is to
be forced to work for someone else, just as to be a master is to live on
someone else's work. In antiquity, just as in Asia and in Africa today,
as well as even in a part of America, slaves were, in all honesty, called
slaves. In the Middle Ages, they took the name of serfs: nowadays they are
called wage earners. The position of this latter group has a great
deal more dignity attached to it, and it is less hard than that of slaves,
but they are nonetheless forced, by hunger as well as by political and social
institutions, to maintain other people in complete or relative idleness,
through their own exceedingly hard labor. Consequently they are slaves.
And in general, no state, ancient or modern, has ever managed or will ever
manage to get along without the forced labor of the masses, either wage
earners or slaves, as a principal and absolutely necessary foundation for
the leisure, the liberty, and the civilization of the political class: the
citizens. On this point, not even the United States of North America
can as yet be an exception.
Such are the internal conditions that necessarily result for the State from
its objective stance, that is, its natural, permanent, and inevitable hostility
toward all the other states. Let us now see the conditions resulting directly
for the State's citizens from that free contract by which they supposedly
constituted themselves into a State.
The State not only has the mission of guaranteeing the safety of its members
against any attack coming from without; it must also defend them within
its own borders, some of them against
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the others, and each of them against himself. For the State
and this is most deeply characteristic of it, of every state, as of every
theologypresupposes man to be essentially evil and wicked. In
the State we are now examining, the good, as we have seen, commences
only with the conclusion of the social contract and, consequently, is merely
the product and very content of this contract. The good is not the
product of liberty. On the contrary, so long as men remain isolated in their
absolute individuality, enjoying their full natural liberty to which they
recognize no limits but those of fact, not of law, they follow one law only,
that of their natural egotism. They offend, maltreat, and rob each other;
they obstruct and devour each other, each to the extent of his intelligence,
his cunning, and his material resources, doing just as the states do to
one another. BY this reasoning, human liberty produces not good but
evil; man is by nature evil. How did he become evil? That is for
theology to explain. The fact is that the Church, at its birth, finds man
already evil, and undertakes to make him good, that is, to transform the
natural man into the citizen.
To this one may rejoin that, since the State is the product of a contract
freely concluded by men, and since the good is the product of the State,
it follows that the good is the product of liberty! Such a conclusion would
not be right at all. The State itself, by this reasoning, is not the product
of liberty; it is, on the contrary, the product of the voluntary sacrifice
and negation of liberty. Natural men, completely free from the sense of
right but exposed, in fact, to all the dangers which threaten
their security at every moment, in order to assure and safeguard this security,
sacrifice, or renounce more or less of their own liberty, and, to the extent
that they have sacrificed liberty for security and have thus become citizens,
they become the slaves of the State. We are therefore right in affirming
that, from the viewpoint of the State, the good is born not of liberty
but rather of the negation of liberty.
Is it not remarkable to find so close a correspondence between theology,
that science of the Church, and politics, that science of the State; to
find this concurrence of two orders of ideas and of realities, outwardly
so opposed, nevertheless holding the same
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conviction: that human liberty must be destroyed if men are to be moral,
if they are to be transformed into saints (for the Church) or into virtuous
citizens (for the State)? Yet we are not at all surprised by this peculiar
harmony, since we are convinced, and shall try to prove, that politics and
theology are two sisters issuing from the same source and pursuing the same
ends under different names; and that every state is a terrestrial church,
just as every church, with its own heaven, the dwelling place of the blessed
and of the immortal God, is but a celestial state.
Thus the State, like the Church, starts out with this fundamental supposition,
that men are basically evil, and that, if delivered up to their natural
liberty, they would tear each other apart and offer the spectacle of the
most terrifying anarchy, where the stronger would exploit and slaughter
the weakerquite the contrary of what goes on in our model states
today, needless to say! The State sets up the principle that in order to
establish public order, there is need of a superior authority; in order
to guide men and repress their evil passions, there is need of a guide and
a curb.
. . . In order to assure the observance of the principles and the administration
of laws in any human society whatsoever, there has to be a vigilant, regulating,
and, if need be, repressive power at the head of the State. It remains for
us to find out who should and who could exercise such power.
For the State founded upon divine right and through the intervention of
any God whatever, the answer is simple enough; the men to exercise such
power would be the priests primarily, and secondarily the temporal authorities
consecrated by the priests. For the State founded on the free social contract,
the answer would be far more difficult. In a pure democracy of equalsall
of whom are, however, considered incapable of self-restraint on behalf of
the common welfare, their liberty tending naturally toward evilwho
would be the true guardian and administrator of the laws, the defender of
justice and of public order against everyone's evil passions? In a word,
who would fulfill the functions of the State?
The best citizens, would be the answer, the most intelligent and the most
virtuous, those who understand better than the others the common interests
of society and the need, the duty,
140 THE ANARCHISM OF MICHAEL BAKUNIN 140
of everyone to subordinate his own interests to the common good. It is,
in fact, necessary for these men to be as intelligent as they are virtuous;
if they were intelligent but lacked virtue, they might very well use the
public welfare to serve their private interests, and if they were virtuous
but lacked intelligence, their good faith would not be enough to save the
public interest from their errors. It is therefore necessary, in order that
a republic may not perish, that it have available throughout its duration
a continuous succession of many citizens possessing both virtue and intelligence.
But this condition cannot be easily or always fulfilled. In the history
of every country, the epochs that boast a sizable group of eminent men are
exceptional, and renowned through the centuries. Ordinarily, within the
precincts of power, it is the insignificant, the mediocre, who predominate,
and often, as we have observed in history, it is vice and bloody violence
that triumph. We may therefore conclude that if it were true, as the theory
of the so-called rational or liberal State clearly postulates, that the
preservation and durability of every political society depend upon a succession
of men as remarkable for their intelligence as for their virtue, there is
not one among the societies now existing that would not have ceased to exist
long ago. If we were to add to this difficulty, not to say impossibility,
those which arise from the peculiar demoralization attendant upon power,
the extraordinary temptations to which all men who hold power in their hands
are exposed, the ambitions, rivalries, jealousies, the gigantic cupidities
by which particularly those in the highest positions are assailed by day
and night, and against which neither intelligence nor even virtue can prevail,
especially the highly vulnerable virtue of the isolated man, it is a wonder
that so many societies exist at all. But let us pass on.
Let us assume that, in an ideal society, in each period, there were a sufficient
number of men both intelligent and virtuous to discharge the principal functions
of the State worthily. Who would seek them out, select them, and place the
reins of power in their hands? Would they themselves, aware of their intelligence
and their virtue, take possession of the power? This was done by two sages
of ancient Greece, Cleobulus and Periander;
141 1867 141
notwithstanding their supposed great wisdom, the Greeks applied to them
the odious name of tyrants. But in what manner would such men seize power?
By persuasion, or perhaps by force? If they used persuasion, we might remark
that he can best persuade who is himself persuaded, and the best men are
precisely those who are least persuaded of their own worth. Even when they
are aware of it, they usually find it repugnant to press their claim upon
others, while wicked and mediocre men, always satisfied with themselves,
feel no repugnance in glorifying themselves. But let us even suppose that
the desire to serve their country had overcome the natural modesty of truly
worthy men and induced them to offer themselves as candidates for the suffrage
of their fellow citizens. Would the people necessarily accept these in preference
to ambitious, smooth-tongued, clever schemers? If, on the other hand, they
wanted to use force, they would, in the first place, have to have available
a force capable of overcoming the resistance of an entire party. They would
attain their power through civil war which would end up with a disgruntled
opposition party, beaten but still hostile. To prevail, the victors would
have to persist in using force. Accordingly the free society would have
become a despotic state, founded upon and maintained by violence, in which
you might possibly find many things worthy of approvalbut never
liberty.
If we are to maintain the fiction of the free state issuing from a social
contract, we must assume that the majority of its citizens must have had
the prudence, the discernment, and the sense of justice necessary to elect
the worthiest and the most capable men and to place them at the head of
their government. But if a people had exhibited these qualities, not just
once and by mere chance but at all times throughout its existence, in all
the elections it had to make, would it not mean that the people itself,
as a mass, had reached so high a degree of morality and of culture that
it no longer had need of either government or state? Such a people would
not drag out a meaningless existence, giving free rein for all its instincts;
out of its life, justice and public order would rise spontaneously and naturally.
The State, in it, would cease to be the providence, the guardian, the educator,
the regulator of society. As it renounced all its repressive power
142 THE ANARCHISM OF MICHAEL BAKUNIN 142
and sank to the subordinate position assigned to it by Proudhon, it would
turn into a mere business office, a sort of central accounting bureau at
the service of society.
There is no doubt that such a political organization, or rather such a reduction
of political action in favor of the liberty of social life, would be a great
benefit to society, but it would in no way satisfy the persistent champions
of the State. To them, the State, as providence, as director of the social
life, dispenser of justice, and regulator of public order, is a necessity.
In other words, whether they admit it or not, whether they call themselves
republicans, democrats, or even socialists, they always must have available
a more or less ignorant, immature, incompetent people, or, bluntly speaking,
a kind of canaille to govern. This would make them, without doing
violence to their lofty altruism and modesty, keep the highest places for
themselves, so as always to devote themselves to the common good, of course.
As the privileged guardians of the human flock, strong in their virtuous
devotion and their superior intelligence, while prodding the people along
and urging it on for its own good and well-being, they would be in a position
to do a little discreet fleecing of that flock for their own benefit.
Any logical and straightforward theory of the State is essentially founded
upon the principle of authority, that is, the eminently theological,
metaphysical, and political idea that the masses, always incapable
of governing themselves, must at all times submit to the beneficent yoke
of a wisdom and a justice imposed upon them, in some way or other, from
above. Imposed in the name of what, and by whom? Authority which is recognized
and respected as such by the masses can come from three sources only: force,
religion, or the action of a superior intelligence. As we are discussing
the theory of the State founded upon the free contract, we must postpone
discussion of those states founded on the dual authority of religion and
force and, for the moment, confine our attention to authority based upon
a superior intelligence, which is, as we know, always represented by minorities.
What do we really see in all states past and present, even those endowed
with the most democratic institutions, such as
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the United States of North America and Switzerland? Actual self-government
of the masses, despite the pretense that the people hold all the power,
remains a fiction most of the time. It is always, in fact, minorities that
do the governing. In the United States, up to the recent Civil War and partly
even now, and even within the party of the present incumbent, President
Andrew Johnson, those ruling minorities were the so-called Democrats, who
continued to favor slavery and the ferocious oligarchy of the Southern planters,
demagogues without faith or conscience, capable of sacrificing everything
to their greed, to their malignant ambition. They were those who, through
their detestable actions and influence, exercised practically without opposition
for almost fifty successive years, have greatly contributed to the corruption
of political morality in North America.
Right now, a really intelligent, generous minoritybut always a
minoritythe Republican party, is successfully challenging their
pernicious policy. Let us hope its triumph may be complete; let us hope
so for all humanity's sake. But no matter how sincere this party of liberty
may be, no matter how great and generous its principles, we cannot hope
that upon attaining power it will renounce its exclusive position of ruling
minority and mingle with the masses, so that popular self-government may
at last become a fact. This would require a revolution, one that would be
profound in far other ways than all the revolutions that have thus far overwhelmed
the ancient world and the modern.
In Switzerland, despite all the democratic revolutions that have taken place
there, government is still in the hands of the well-off, the middle class,
those privileged few who are rich, leisured, educated. The sovereignty of
the peoplea term, incidentally, which we detest, since all sovereignty
is to us detestable the government of the masses by themselves,
is here likewise a fiction. The people are sovereign in law, but not in
fact; since they are necessarily occupied with their daily labor which leaves
them no leisure, and since they are, if not totally ignorant, at least quite
inferior in education to the propertied middle class, they are constrained
to leave their alleged sovereignty in the hands of the middle class. The
only advantage they derive from
144 THE ANARCHISM OF MICHAEL BAKUNIN 144
this situation, in Switzerland as well as in the United States of North
America, is that the ambitious minorities, the seekers of political power,
cannot attain power except by wooing the people, by pandering to their fleeting
passions, which at times can be quite evil, and, in most cases, by deceiving
them.
Let no one think that in criticizing the democratic government we thereby
show our preference for the monarchy. We are firmly convinced that the most
imperfect republic is a thousand times better than the most enlightened
monarchy. In a republic, there are at least brief periods when the people,
while continually exploited, is not oppressed; in the monarchies, oppression
is constant. The democratic regime also lifts the masses up gradually to
participation in public lifesomething the monarchy never does.
Nevertheless, while we prefer the republic, we must recognize and proclaim
that whatever the form of government may be, so long as human society continues
to be divided into different classes as a result of the hereditary
inequality of occupations, of wealth, of education, and of rights, there
will always be a class-restricted government and the inevitable exploitation
of the majorities by the minorities.
The State is nothing but this domination and this exploitation, well regulated
and systematized. We shall try to prove this by examining the consequences
of the government of the masses by a minority, intelligent and dedicated
as you please, in an ideal state founded upon the free contract.
Once the conditions of the contract have been accepted, it remains only
to put them into effect. Suppose that a people recognized their incapacity
to govern, but still had sufficient judgment to confide the administration
of public affairs to their best citizens. At first these individuals are
esteemed not for their official position but for their good qualities. They
have been elected by the people because they are the most intelligent, capable,
wise, courageous, and dedicated among them. Coming from the mass of the
people, where all are supposedly equal, they do not yet constitute a separate
class, but a group of men privileged only by nature and for that very reason
singled out for election by the people. Their number is necessarily very
limited, for in all times and in all nations the number of men endowed with
quali
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ties so remarkable that they automatically command the unanimous respect
of a nation is, as experience teaches us, very small. Therefore, on pain
of making a bad choice the people will be forced to choose its rulers from
among them.
Here then is a society already divided into two categories, if not yet two
classes. One is composed of the immense majority of its citizens who freely
submit themselves to a government by those they have elected; the other
is composed of a small number of men endowed with exceptional attributes,
recognized and accepted as exceptional by the people and entrusted by them
with the task of governing. As these men depend on popular election, they
cannot at first be distinguished from the mass of citizens except by the
very qualities which have recommended them for election, and they are naturally
the most useful and the most dedicated citizens of all. They do not as yet
claim any privilege or any special right except that of carrying out, at
the people's will, the special functions with which they have been entrusted.
Besides, they are not in any way different from other people in their way
of living or earning their means of living, so that a perfect equality still
subsists among all.
Can this equality be maintained for any length of time? We claim it cannot,
a claim that is easy enough to prove.
Nothing is as dangerous for man's personal morality as the habit of commanding.
The best of men, the most intelligent, unselfish, generous, and pure, will
always and inevitably be corrupted in this pursuit. Two feelings inherent
in the exercise of power never fail to produce this demoralization: contempt
for the masses, and, for the man in power, an exaggerated sense of his own
worth.
The masses, on admitting their own incapacity to govern themselves,
have elected me as their head. By doing so, they have clearly proclaimed
their own inferiority and my superiority. In this great crowd
of men, among whom I hardly find any who are my equals, I alone am capable
of administering public affairs. The people need me; they cannot get along
without my services, while I am sufficient unto myself. They must therefore
obey me for their own good, and I, by deigning to command them, create their
happiness and well-being. There is enough here to turn
146 THE ANARCHISM OF MICHAEL BAKUNIN 146
anyone's head and corrupt the heart and make one swell with pride, isn't
there? That is how power and the habit of commanding become a source of
aberration, both intellectual and moral, even for the most intelligent and
most virtuous of men.
All human moralityand we shall try, further on, to prove the absolute
truth of this principle, the development, explanation, and widest application
of which constitute the real subject of this essayall collective
and individual morality rests essentially upon respect for humanity.
What do we mean by respect for humanity? We mean the recognition of human
right and human dignity in every man, of whatever race, color, degree of
intellectual development, or even morality. But if this man is stupid, wicked,
or contemptible, can I respect him? Of course, if he is all that, it is
impossible for me to respect his villainy, his stupidity, and his brutality;
they are repugnant to me and arouse my indignation. I shall, if necessary,
take the strongest measures against them, even going so far as to kill him
if I have no other way of defending against him my life, my right, and whatever
I hold precious and worthy. But even in the midst of the most violent and
bitter, even mortal, combat between us, I must respect his human character.
My own dignity as a man depends on it. Nevertheless, if he himself fails
to recognize this dignity in others, must we recognize it in him? If he
is a sort of ferocious beast or, as sometimes happens, worse than a beast,
would we not, in recognizing his humanity, be supporting a mere fiction?
NO, for whatever his present intellectual and moral degradation may be,
if, organically, he is neither an idiot nor a madmanin which case
he should be treated as a sick man rather than as a criminalif
he is in full possession of his senses and of such intelligence as nature
has granted him, his humanity, no matter how monstrous his deviations might
be, nonetheless really exists. It exists as a lifelong potential capacity
to rise to the awareness of his humanity, even if there should be little
possibility for a radical change in the social conditions which have made
him what he is.
Take the most intelligent ape, with the finest disposition; though you place
him in the best, most humane environment, you will never make a man of him.
Take the most hardened
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criminal or the man with the poorest mind, provided that neither has any
organic lesion causing idiocy or insanity; the criminality of the one, and
the failure of the other to develop an awareness of his humanity and his
human duties, is not their fault, nor is it due to their nature; it is
solely the result of the social environment in which they were born and
brought up.
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