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Updated: September 23, 2025
"The explicit declaration made by me ..." says Guillaume, "took away from Bakounin at the very beginning all hope of a change in our estimation of him. It was also a question of money in this last interview. We offered to assure to our old friend a monthly pension of 300 francs, expressing the hope that he would continue to write, but he refused to accept anything. Then we separated sadly."
This is as far as Bakounin gets in the statement of his new program of action, as this article, like many others, was discontinued and thrown aside at the moment when he comes to clinching his argument. The mountain, however, had labored, and this was its mouse. It is chiefly remarkable as a forecast of the methods adopted by the syndicalists a quarter of a century later.
But the State, in the form and aspect of two companies of national bourgeois guards, entered by a door which they had forgotten to guard, swept the hall, and caused Bakounin to hasten back along the road to Geneva." Such indeed was the humiliating and vexatious ending of Bakounin's dream of an immediate social revolution. His sole reward was to be jostled, pinched, and robbed.
A revolutionary government was immediately established, namely the Commune, composed in part of workmen belonging to the International, in part of bourgeois radical republicans.... But those blunderers, Bakounin and Cluseret, arrived at Lyons and spoiled everything. Both being members of the International, they had unfortunately enough influence to lead our friends astray.
The despair of Bakounin over the miserable ending of his great plans for the salvation of France had, of course, disappeared long before the revolution broke out in Spain, and he easily persuaded himself that his presence there was absolutely necessary to insure its success.
In any case, Nechayeff was constantly with Bakounin in the spring and summer of 1869, and the most important of these brochures were published in Geneva in the summer of that year.
Gaspard Blanc and Albert Richard, two intimate friends of Bakounin, were not members of this committee, and in a public meeting, September 8, Richard made a motion, which was carried, to name a standing commission of ten to act as the "intermediaries between the people of Lyons and the Committee of Public Safety."
Beyond giving the Bakouninists a chance to play at revolution, there is little significance in the Italian uprisings of that year. The failure of the various insurrections in France, Spain, and Italy was, naturally enough, discouraging to Bakounin and his followers.
There they passed two or three hours in drawing up resolutions, while Bakounin and others in vain protested: "We must act. We are losing time. We are going to be invaded by the national bourgeois guard. It is necessary to arrest immediately the prefect, the mayor, and General Mazure." But their words went unheeded.
Liberty, fraternity, and equality were, of course, called into service. The treason of certain working-class politicians was pointed out as the natural and inevitable result of political action, while to those who had given little thought to economic theory the abolition of inheritances seemed the final word. Nor did Bakounin limit his efforts to his pen.
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