War and the State – Mikhail Bakunin and James Guillaume (1870)

_{Jurka, a brown bear captured in Italy, “in her enclosure” in the Alternative Wolf and Bear Park in Germany’s Black Forest (credit: Stiftung für Bären / Foundation for Bears). “Jurka’s third offspring, JJ3, was shot in Switzerland after persistently rummaging for food in bins close to towns” (BBC)}

Excerpts focusing on war and the State from a pamphlet entitled ‘Les Ours de Berne et l’Ours de Saint-Pétersbourg‘ (The Bears of Bern and the Bear of Saint Petersburg), the manuscript for which was written by Mikhail Bakunin and given to his comrade James Guillaume for re-wording, editing and publishing. Re-arranged excerpts from the pamphlet were later translated and republished by Gregory P. Maximoff in his edited work, ‘The Political Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific Anarchism‘ in 1953, then the entire pamphlet was translated by Shawn P. Wilbur in 2014, although Wilbur on his site does not note Guillaume as the source, re-writer and editor of the text (Bakunin’s original manuscript was not preserved, according to Guillaume). As part of my own editing of this abridged and anti-war-focused version of Guillaume and Bakunin’s pamphlet, I’ve corrected what seem to be minor mistakes in formatting and spelling by Wilbur and Maximoff (or the uploader of his book to the Anarchist Library)

_[…]

Revolutions are not child’s play, nor are they academic debates in which only vanities are hurt in furious clashes, nor literary jousts wherein only ink is spilled profusely. Revolution means war, and that implies the destruction of men and things. Of course it is a pity that humanity has not yet invented a more peaceful means of progress, but until now every forward step in history has been achieved only after it has been baptized in blood. For that matter, reaction can hardly reproach revolution on this point; it has always shed more blood than the latter. ^{[translation by Maximoff]}

Take as proof the massacres of Paris in June 1848 and in December 1851, the savage repressions of the despotic governments of other countries, in the same period and after, without speaking of the dozens, of the hundreds of thousands of victims which are the cost of wars, the necessary consequences, and like the periodic fevers of that political and social state we call the reaction.

It is thus impossible to be either a revolutionary, or a true reactionary, without committing acts which, from the point of view of the criminal and civil codes, unquestionably constitute offenses or even crimes, but which from the point of view of real and serious practice, whether of the reaction, or of the revolution, appear as inevitable misfortunes. ^{[translation by Wilbur]}

_[…]

What is permitted to the State is forbidden to the individual. Such is the maxim of all governments. Machiavelli said it, and history as well as the practice of all contemporary governments bear him out on that point. Crime is the necessary condition of the very existence of the State, and it therefore constitutes its exclusive monopoly, from which it follows that the individual who dares commit a crime is guilty in a two-fold sense: first, he is guilty against human conscience, and, above all, he is guilty against the State in arrogating to himself one of its most precious privileges.

_[…]

It will be contended that economic centralization can be attained only by political centralization, that one implies the other, and that both are necessary and beneficial to the same extent. Not at all, we say. Economic centralization, the essential condition of civilization, creates liberty; but political centralization kills it, destroying for the benefit of the government and the governing classes the life and spontaneous action of the population. Concentration of political power can produce only slavery, for freedom and power are mutually exclusive. Every government, even the most democratic one, is the natural enemy of freedom, and the stronger it is, the more concentrated its power, the more oppressive it becomes. These truths, for that matter, are so simple and clear that one feels ashamed in having to repeat them.

_[…]

Modern society is so convinced of this truth — that all political power, whatever its origin and form may be, necessarily tends toward despotism — that in any country where society succeeds in emancipating itself to some extent from the State, it hastens to subject the government, even when the latter has sprung from a revolution and from popular elections, to as severe a control as possible. It places the salvation of liberty in a real and serious organization of control to be exercised by the popular will and opinion, upon men invested with public authority. In all the countries enjoying representative government, liberty can be valid only when the control is valid. On the contrary, where such control is fictitious, the freedom of the people likewise becomes a mere fiction. ^[tr:M]

Such is the eternal history of political power, since that power has been established in the world. That is also what explains why and how some men who have been the reddest democrats, the most furious rebels, when they are among the mass of the governed, become excessively moderate conservatives as soon as they rise to power. We ordinarily attribute these palinodes to treason. That is an error; their principal cause is the change of perspective and position, and never forget that the positions and the necessities they impose are always more powerful than the hatred or ill will of individuals.

Touched by this truth, I would not fear to express this conviction, that if tomorrow we established a government and a legislative council, a parliament, made up exclusively of workers, these workers who are today firm socialist democrats, would become the day after tomorrow determined aristocrats, bold or timid worshipers of the principle of authority, oppressors and exploiters. My conclusion is this: ^[tr:W]

It is necessary to abolish completely, both in principle and in fact, all that which is called political power; for, so long as political power exists, there will be ruler and ruled, masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited. Once abolished, political power should be replaced by an organization of productive forces and economic services. ^[tr:M]

_[…]

What to do then? To return to the political autonomy of the [Swiss] cantons is an impossible thing. To preserve political centralization is not desirable. The dilemma thus posed admits only one solution: ^[tr:W]

The abolition of every political State, the transformation of the political federation into an economic, national, and international federation.

It is toward this aim that Europe as a whole is now marching. ^[tr:M]

_[…]

Must we prove that the first basis, that of respect for treaties and rights, is perfectly null? Morals, we know, only exert an extremely weak influence on the domestic policy of States; it exerts none on their foreign policy. ^[tr:W]

The supreme law of the State is self-preservation at any cost. And since all States, ever since they came to exist upon the earth, have been condemned to perpetual struggle — a struggle against their own populations, whom they oppress and ruin, a struggle against all foreign States, every one of which can be strong only if the others are weak — and since the States cannot hold their own in this struggle unless they constantly keep on augmenting their power against their own subjects as well as against the neighbor States — it follows that the supreme law of the State is the augmentation of its power to the detriment of internal liberty and external justice. ^[tr:M]

That transcendent, extra-human and thus anti-human morality of the State is not only the result of corruption of the men who fulfill its functions. You could say rather that the corruption of these men is the natural, necessary consequence of the institution of States. This morality is nothing but the development of the fundamental principle of the State, the inevitable expression of a need inherent in the State. The State is nothing other than the negation of humanity; it is a restricted collectivity that wants to take its place and wants to impose itself as a supreme end, to which all must serve and all must submit.

It was natural and easy in antiquity, while the idea of humanity was unknown, while each people loved exclusively its national gods, which gave it the power of life and death over all the other nations. Human right then existed only for the citizens of the State. Everything outside the State was doomed to pillage, massacre and slavery.

It is no longer so today. The idea of humanity becomes increasingly powerful in the civilized world, and even, thanks to the expansion and the increasing speed of communication and thanks to the influence, even more material than moral, of civilization on the barbarian peoples, it already begins to penetrate these latter. This idea is the invisible power of the century, with which the powers of the day, the States, must count. They cannot submit to it in good faith, because that submission on their part would be tantamount to suicide, the triumph of humanity only being achieved by the destruction of the States. But they can no longer deny or rebel openly against it, because having become too powerful today, it could kill them.

In this painful alternative, there remains to them only one option: it is hypocrisy. They give the air of respect, they do not speak, they no longer act except in its name, and they violate it every day. Do not blame them for that. They cannot act otherwise, their position having become such that they can no longer preserve themselves except by lying. Diplomacy has no other mission.

So what do we see? Whenever one State wants to declare war on another, he begins by issuing a manifesto addressed not only to his own subjects, but to the whole world, in which, putting all the right on his own side, it tries to prove that that it only breathes humanity and love of peace, and that suffused with these generous and peaceful sentiments, it suffered a long time in silence, but that the increasing iniquity of the enemy finally forced it to draw the sword from its scabbard. It swears at the same time that, disdainful of all material conquest and not seeking any increase in its territory, it will end this war as soon as justice is restored. Its opponent responds with a similar manifesto in which naturally all the right, justice, humanity, and all the generous sentiments are found on its own side. These two opposing manifestos are written with the same eloquence, they breathe the same righteous indignation, and one is as sincere as the other, that is to say that both lie shamelessly, and only fools allow themselves to be taken in.

The informed men, all those who have some experience of politics, do not even take the trouble of reading them; but they seek, on the contrary, to sort out the interests that drive to two adversaries to that war, and to weigh their respective forces in order to predict the outcome. Evidence that moral considerations don’t enter in at all.

The right of people, the treaties that govern the relations of States, are deprived of any legal sanction. They are, in each determined period of history, the material expression of the balance resulting from the mutual antagonism of the States. As long as there are States, there will be no peace. There will only shorter or longer truces, armistices concluded by the discouraged, by these eternal belligerents, the States, and as soon as a State feels strong enough to profit by breaking this balance, it will never fail to do. All history is there to prove it.

So it would be a great folly on our part to base our security on faith in the treaties that guarantee the independence and neutrality of the Swiss. We should found it on bases that are more real.

The antagonism of interests and mutual jealousy of the States surrounding Switzerland offer a much more serious guarantee, it is true, but still very inadequate. It is perfectly true that none of these States alone could lay hands on Switzerland, without all the others immediately opposing it, and you can be sure that the division of Switzerland could not be made at the beginning of a European war, when each state, still uncertain of success, would be well advised to hide its ambitious views. But that division could still be made at the end of a great war, to the profit of the victorious states, and even the benefit of the vanquished States, as compensation for other territories that they could be forced to yield. This is clear.

Let us suppose that the great war that we prophesy daily breaks out in the end, between France, Italy and Austria on one side, and Prussia with Russia on the other. If it is France that triumphs, what will prevent it from seizing French-speaking Switzerland and giving Ticino to Italy? If it is Prussia that wins, what will prevent it from getting its hands on the part of German-speaking Switzerland it has coveted for so long, except to give up, if it appears necessary as a compensation, at least a portion of French-speaking Switzerland to France and Ticino to Italy?

It will doubtless not be the gratitude that these States will experience for the great services as policeman that the Federal Council has made for them before the war. We would have to be very naive to rely on the gratitude of a State. Gratitude is a feeling, and feelings have nothing to do with politics, which has no other motive than interests. We must permeate ourselves with that idea that the sympathies or antipathies that our formidable neighbors may inspire in us, cannot have the least influence on our national security. Let them love us and have a heart full of gratitude towards us, if they find the dismemberment of Switzerland is possible, they will tear us apart. Let them hate us as much as they want, but if they are convinced of the impossibility of dividing Switzerland among themselves, they will respect us. So we must create this impossibility. But being able to be based on the calculations of diplomacy, that impossibility can only reside in the republican energy of the Swiss people.

Such is then the only real and serious basis of our security, of our liberty, of our national independence. It is not by veiling, nor by belittling our republican principle, it is not by shamefully asking the despotic powers to continue to permit us to be, in the midst of monarchical States, the only republic of Europe, it is not by striving to win their good graces by shameful deference;— no: it is by raising high our republican flag, it is by proclaiming our principles of liberty, equality and international justice, it is by frankly becoming a center of propaganda and attraction for the people, and an object of respect and hatred for all the despots, that we will save Switzerland.

And it is in the name of our national security, as much as in the name of our republican dignity, that we should protest against the odious, unspeakable, and deadly acts of our Federal Council. ^[tr:W]

On Bakunin’s Racism – M.Gouldhawke (2024)

There is plenty of discussion of Bakunin’s antisemitism. However, it is rarely if ever mentioned that Bakunin was also disgustingly anti-indigenous.

In his 1869 Letters on Patriotism (excerpts from which were translated and republished by Gregory P. Maximoff in 1953), Bakunin wrote:

“No one will deny that the instinctive or natural patriotism of the wretched tribes inhabiting the Arctic zone, hardly touched by human civilization and poverty-stricken even in respect to bare necessities of material life, is infinitely stronger and more exclusive than the patriotism of a Frenchman, an Englishman, or a German, for example. The Frenchman, the Englishman, and the German can live and acclimatize themselves anywhere, whereas the native of the polar regions would pine away longing for his country were he kept out of it. And still what could be more miserable and less human than his existence! This merely proves once more that the intensity of this kind of patriotism is an indication of bestiality and not of humanity.”

Although Bakunin advocated the self-determination of all peoples and communities, he was ignorant as to his own racism, not to mention ignorant as to how such racism inhibits national liberation struggles and the struggle for a free humanity and world.

Anarchists of today would be well-advised to better examine, critique and combat their own racist, and more specifically anti-indigenous, tendencies, along with the retrograde beliefs of historical anarchists. Simply declaring one’s support for Indigenous struggles is not enough.

M.Gouldhawke (December 2024)