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Updated: September 23, 2025
Bakounin, on the other hand, remained in Switzerland and became the very soul of that element in Italy, Spain, and Switzerland which fought the policies of Marx in the International. At the same time he was training a group of youngsters to carry out in Western Europe the principles of revolution as laid down in his Russian publications.
All sections of the Alliance undertook to see that friends of Bakounin were sent as delegates to the congress, and it was charged that credentials were obtained in various underhanded ways. However that may have been, the "practical," "cold-blooded" Marx was completely outwitted by his "sentimental" and "visionary" antagonist.
Bakounin then wrote to his wealthy young disciple, Cafiero, in a symbolic language which they had worked out between them, declaring his intention of going to Spain and asking him to furnish the necessary money for his expenses.
He declares his own aim to be "the complete and real emancipation of all the proletariat, not only of some countries, but of all nations, civilized and non-civilized." In these declarations the differences between Marx and Bakounin stand forth vividly. Marx at no time states what he wishes. He expresses no sentiment, but confines himself to a cold statement of the facts as he sees them.
He speaks of it in another place in these words: "Then arrived the critical moment, the moment longed for since many years, when Bakounin was able to accomplish the most revolutionary act the world has ever seen: he decreed the abolition of the State.
The failure of Herwegh's project forced Bakounin to admit later that Marx had been right. Yet, as we know, with Bakounin's advancing years the passion for insurrections became with him almost a mania. If this quarrel between Bakounin and Marx casts a light upon the causes of their antagonism, a still greater illumination is shed by the differences between them which arose in 1849.
In any case, he made no effort to prevent the Neue Rheinische Zeitung from printing shortly after the following: "Yesterday it was asserted that George Sand was in possession of papers which seriously compromised the Russian who has been banished from here, Michael Bakounin, and represented him as an instrument or an agent of Russia, newly enrolled, to whom is attributed the leading part in the recent arrest of the unfortunate Poles.
As usual, Bakounin became melodramatic in his effort to work upon the impressionable Cafiero, and, as he put it afterward in the Mémoire justificatif, "I added a prayer that he would become the protector of my wife and my children, in case I should fall in Spain." Cafiero, who at this time worshiped Bakounin, pleaded with him not to risk his precious life in Spain.
Can you, I do not say lend me, but give me 500 or 400, or 300 or 200, or even 100 francs, for my voyage?" Guillaume does not state where the money finally came from, but Bakounin evidently raised it somehow, for he left Locarno on September 9. The night of the 11th he spent in Neuchâtel, where he conferred with Guillaume regarding the publication of a manuscript.
If, however, the Spanish revolution was forced to proceed without Bakounin, his influence in that country was not wanting. In the year 1873 the Spanish sections of the International were among the largest and most numerous in Europe.
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