textfiles/politics/SPUNK/sp000401.txt

Fellow Workers,

I know this discussion died a couple of weeks ago, but when I saw the first
post claiming that Bakunin and Nechayev shared similar politics I saw red and
went searching in my files.  Unfortunately, my files are somewhat disorganized
and I've been fairly busy looking for a new master (my current boss has given
me notice), so I just found Bakunin's June 2, 1870 letter to Nechayev
(published in pamphlet form under the title Bakunin on Violence by the
Anarchist Switchboard, NYC--the original is in the Herzen archives) which makes
quite clear Bakunin's strong disagreement with Nechayev's political and
tactical approach.  Some excerpts:

Bakunin rebukes Nechayev and his Chatechism for vanguardism:

"To begin with, my views are different in that they do not acknowledge the
usefulness, or even the possibility, of any revolution except a spontaneous or
a people's social revolution. I am deeply convinced that any other revolution
is dishonest, harmful, and spells death to liberty and the people. It doomes
them to new penury and new slavery.... [He then notes that the greatly expanded
power of the state and its military/police apparatus has] armed the state with
such enormous power that all contrived secret conspiracies and non-popular
attempts, sudden attacks, surprises and coups--are boud to be shattered against
it. It can only be conquered by a spontaneous people's revolution.
"Thus the sole aim of a secret society must be, not the creation of an
artificial power outside the people, but the rousing, uniting and organizing of
the spontaneous power of the people; therefore, the only possibile, the only
real revolutionary army is not outside the people, it is the people itself. It
is impossible to arouse the people artificially. People's revolutions are born
from the course of events.... There are historical periods when revolutions are
simply impossible; there are other periods when they are inevitable... I
maintain that a popular social revolution is inevitable everywhere within
Europe. Will it catch fire soon and where first? ... Nobody can foretell.
Perhaps it will blaze up in a year's time, or even earlier, or perhaps in ten
or twenty years. This does not matter, and the people who intend to serve it
honestly do not serve for their own pleasure. All secret societies who wish to
be really useful to it must, first of all, renounce all nervousness, all
impatience..."

Bakunin goes on to discuss the Russian situation and the revolutionary
potential there.  He notes the possibilities of the peasant's collectivist
instincts, but also the localism which hampers revolutionary success and,
indeed, solidarity.  The "secret organization" seeks to awaken consciousness of
the necessity for federation and solidarity.  Bakunin points to the large
numbers of alienated educated youth who make up the bulk of the explicitly
revolutionary milieu, and its potential for helping the revolution take shape:

"If one considers the people as a revolutionary army, here is our General
Staff, here is the precious material for a secret organization.
"But this world must be really organized and moralized, while your system
depraves it and prepares within it traitors to the system and exploiters of the
people... Choose a hundred people by lot out of this world and put them in a
situation which would enable them to exploit and oppress the people--one can be
sure that they will exploit and oppress it. It follows that there is ittle
original virtue in them. One must use their poverty-stricken condition which
makes them virtuous in spite of themselves and, by constant propaganda and the
power of organization, arouse this virtue, educate it, confirm it in them and
make it passionately conscious. Whereas you [Nechayev] do the opposite:
following the Jesuit system you systematically kill all personal human feeling
in them... educate them in lying, suspicion, spying and denunciation....
"Let us first of all define more exactly the aim, meaning, and purpose of this
[secret] organization. As I have mentioned several times above, according to my
system it would not constitute a revolutionary army--we should have only one
revolutionary army: the people--the organization should only be the staff of
this army, an organizer of the people's power, not its own... A revolutionary
idea is revolutionary, vital, real and true only because it expresses and only
as far as it represents popular instincts which are the result of history. To
strive to foist on the people your own thoughts--foreign to its
instinct--implies a wish to make it subservient to a new state... The
organization must accept in all sincerity the idea thaty it is a servant and a
helper, but never a commander of the people, never under any pretest its
manager, not even under the pretext of the people's welfare.
"The organization is faced with an enormous task: not only to prepare the
success of the people's revolution through propaganda and the unification of
popular power; not only to destroy totally, by the power of this revolution,
the whole existing economic, social and political order; but, in addition ...
to make impossible after the popular victory the establishment of any state
power over the people--even the most revolutionary, even your power--because
any power, whatever it called itsdelf, would inevitably subject the people to
old slavery in a new form. Therefore our organization must be strong and vital
to survive the first victory of the people and--this is not at all a simple
matter--the organization must be so deeply imbued with its principles that one
could hope that even in the midst of the revolution it will not change its
thoughts, or character or direction.
"Which, then, should be this direction? What would be the main purpose and task
of the organization? To help the people achieve self-determination on a basis
of complete and comprehensive human liberty, without the slightest interference
from even temporary or transitional power...
"We are bitter foes of all official power, even if it were ultra-revolutionary
power. We are enemies of all publicly acknowledged dictatorship; we are
social-revolutionary anarchists. But you will ask, if we are anarchists, by
what right do we wish to and by what method can we influence the people?
Rejecting any power, by what power or rather by what force shall we direct the
people's revolution? An invisible force--recognized by on one, imposed by no
one--through which the collective dictatorship of our organization will be all
the mightier, the more it remains invisible and unacknowledged, the more it
remains without any official legality and significance."

Bakunin goes on to describe this "invisible dictatorship":
"Imagine... a secret organization which has scattered its members in small
ghroups over the whole territory of the Empire but is nevertheless firmly
united: inspired by a common ideal... an organization which acts everywhere
according to a common plan. These small groups, unknown by anybody as such,
have no officially recognized power but they are strong in their ideal, which
expresses the very essence of the people's instincts, desires and demands...
Finally they are strong in their solidarity which ties all the obscure groups
into one organic whole... these groups will be able to lead the popular
movement without seeking for themselves priviliges, honors or power, in
defiance of all ambitious persons who are divided and fighting among themselves
and to lead it to the greatest possible realization of the socio-economic ideal
and to the organization of fullest liberty for the people. This is what I cann
the collective dictatorship of the secret organization.
"This dictatorship is free from all self-interest, vanity and ambition for it
is anonymous, invisible and does not give advantage or honor or official
recognition of power to a member of the group or to the groups themselves. It
does not threaten the liberty of the people because it is free from all
official character..."

Bakunin notes that not many people are needed for this secret
organization--50 or 60 would be "more than enough." (this is the whole of
Russia, remember)

Bakunin goes on to demand that Nechayev establish full equality in his
organization, detailing an organizational plan that is certainly secret (of
necessity, given conditions) and centralized (in that a central committee, with
representation from each region, sets policy, subject to removal at any time
should it abuse its power).  

It seems clear that while we might have preferred clearer language, this
"collective dictatorship" exercises power only to the extent that its ideas,
its propaganda, find support and are implemented by the general population.
There is simply no basis--no infrastructure of police, of
power--by which such an organization could compel anyone to do anything.  It
can lead only by the force of its ideas and its example, and even then only in
a handful of places which might hopefully inspire others to rebel.

I do not intend to hold Bakunin up as a model of theorizing how to organize a
revolutionary movement.  I personally would not care to be a member of an
organization structured along the lines Bakunin recommends (though I reiterate
that the emphasis on secrecy is explained largely by the circumstances in which
Bakunin operated).  But I cannot fathom how some people claim to find support
for Lenin's dictatorship [over] the proletariat here.  And the claim that
Bakunin shared Nechayev's politics and organizational methods is simply a
slander:
"You wished, and still wish, to make your own selfless cruelty, your own truly
extreme fanaticism, into a rule of common life.... Renounce your system and you
will become a valuable man; if, however, you do not wish to renounce it you
will certainly become a harmful militant, highly destructive not to the state
but to the cause of liberty..."

Jon Bekken