Mikhail Bakunin (A Man of no Substance?) A man of no substance, or so he has been accused by his political detractors, for unlike his nemesis, Karl Marx, he has left no great body of work, no much pawed ideological treatise, no well considered philosophical tract; but then he was primarily a man of action, even if these actions were often in response to events, late, ill-conceived and ineffective. Nevertheless, he remains a star in anarchist circles and his influence is undeniable. Born in 1814, he was a scion of the Russian nobility. His upbringing and education was fairly orthodox for someone of his social class and upon graduation he dutifully served as an officer in the Tsar's army. Fighting in the Caucasus, his courage was undeniable and he was popular with his men. There was as yet no indication of the revolutionary road he was set to travel. In 1835, he resigned his commission and returned to Moscow to study. It was while he was at University that he became embroiled in radical politics. So much so that it became impossible for him to remain in Russia. In 1842, he headed west finally settling in Paris. A city that was a hotbed of revolutionary politics and Bakunin soon fell into the radical milieu and made the acquaintance of Karl Marx, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, George Sand, and his life-long friend and fellow Russian exile, Alexander Herzen. He was to be deported from France for too vocally supporting the Polish uprising. But then the timing could not have been better.
In 1848, revolution swept across Europe. Bakunin was active in both assisting the insurrection in Prague and organising the resistance in Dresden. His leadership on the barricades was even acknowledged and praised by Karl Marx. In 1849, he was arrested, ironically, for his participation in the Czech uprising. He was deported again, this time back to Russia, where he was imprisoned in the notorious Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg. In 1857, he was exiled to Siberia. Eventually he engineered his own escape but his years in prison and taken a terrible toll. Always a large man, his weight had ballooned and he had taken on a bear like appearance. His teeth were rotten, his beard and hair unkempt, his clothes dishevelled, and his personal hygiene, or lack of, was oft-commented upon. He had also acquired an innate idleness. He was often late, rarely fulfilled an obligation, ate much, wrote little, and slept a lot. Fleeing Russia he finally landed up in London where he met up again with Herzen and together they worked on the radical journal Kolokol (The Bell). In 1863, he left London to participate in the Polish uprising but he got no further than Switzerland. It was here, however, that he made a number of important and enduring contacts establishing a network of anarchists associations in the mountainous region of the Jura. His tendency though not to be present when it counted was becoming a habit. For example, whilst he participated in the prequel to the Paris Commune, he missed the main event. In 1866, Bakunin and his followers joined the recently established International Working Mens Association, or First International. A disparate association of radical groupings and trade unions inspired, founded, and dominated by Karl Marx. But the organisation very quickly foundered in a sea of argument and dispute. The anarchists centred around Bakunin who refused to
contemplate any participation in the structures of bourgeois government, particularly in parliamentary elections. Bakunin also refused to accept Marx's concept of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. A vote was taken on the issue and Bakunin and his supporters lost. They were later expelled from the First International for continuing conspiratorial activity. An accusation that was almost certainly true for Bakunin was always drawn towards the secret society. The anarchists though, rather than try to organise with the International simply established their own at St Imier in Switzerland. Bakunin again made an abortive attempt to participate in an insurrection, this time in Bologna. Despite his failing health he remained a major and influential figure in radical European politics. He died, in his bed, in Berne, Switzerland in 1876. Postscript: Bakunin/Marx and the Clash of Ideologies That Anarchism and Marxism were fundamentally irreconcilable political ideologies became evident in the disputes that tore apart the First International. Bakunin believed that the application of a Marxist system would simply replace a repressive capitalist state system with a socialist one. He also opposed the economic determinism in Marxist thought - the idea that being determines consciousness. He was also against the idea that all the super-structural factors of a society, its laws, moralities, science and religion were but "the necessary after effects of the development of economic facts", Rather than science or history being primarily determined by economic factors (the mode of production). Bakunin allowed much more for the intervention of human beings in the realisation of their destiny. More fundamental to his disdain for Marxism was his strident and unwavering opposition to the idea of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat- a transitional state that would be required to pave the way to stateless communism. The Communist Manifesto of 1848 criticised the backwardness of rural communities and of the need for labour armies under State supervision, and of the need for a centralised and directed economy, and for widespread nationalisation. Marx also suggested that a workers government could come about via a universal franchise. Bakunin opposed all these formulations: the State whether bourgeois or proletarian governs according to coercion and is inevitably trusted to elites. The workers' then can only govern by proxy at best. A new class of experts would invariably emerge - scientists, bureaucrats, professional politicians and the like - who would dominate the new society by means of a mystification derived from the notion that they are governing according to scientific laws, a favourite claim of Marxists. At the same time the State would be masquerading as the true expression of the People's Will. The institutionalising of power would give rise to the same self-seeking elites found in bourgeois society but with the added legitimacy of being representatives of a classless People's State. The Statist system would increase its domination through the command economy with control emanating from the top. The State would become an inefficient giant incapable of responding to the needs of the individual. Marx believed that centralism was essential for the statist solution of revolution. Bakunin did not. He was a federalist who denied the necessity and authority of a state created for good or ill. He had no desire to impose equality he merely wished people to be free.