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Updated: June 2, 2025
On the 4th of September, 1870, the Third Republic was proclaimed in Paris, and a few days afterward there were many uprisings in the other cities of France. It was, however, only in Lyons that the Bakouninists played an important part.
While the Bakouninists were decreeing the revolution by posters and vainly calling the people to arms, an event occurred in Lyons which brought to them a very useful contingent of fighters. The Lyons municipality had just reduced the pay of the workers in the national dock yards from three to two and a half francs a day, and, on this account, these laborers joined the ranks of the insurgents.
Back of all the Italian riots lay a serious economic condition. The peasants were in very deep distress, and it was not difficult for the Bakouninists to stir them to revolt.
While the above events were transpiring in the Latin countries, the Bakouninists were keeping a sharp eye on America as a land of hopeful possibilities. As early as 1874 Bakounin himself considered the matter of coming here, while Kropotkin and Guillaume followed with interest the labor disturbances that were at that time so numerous and so violent in this country.
Frederick Engels severely criticised the position of the Bakouninists in two articles which he published in the Volksstaat. He reviewed the events that had taken place during the summer of 1873, and he condemned the folly of the anarchists, who had refused to coöperate with the other revolutionary forces in Spain.
In reading the now extensive literature on syndicalism, one finds endless chapters devoted to pointing out the weaknesses and faults of political socialism. Like the Bakouninists, the chief strength of the revolutionary unionists lies in criticism rather than in any constructive thought or action of their own. The battle of to-day is, however, a very unequal one.
On the other hand, the Bakouninists, old and new, believe that the people must be deceived into a better social order, and that is founded upon their complete distrust of the people. And, rightly enough, the attitude of the masses toward the secret and conspiratory methods of both the idealist anarchist and the materialist anarchist is the same.
However, although the insurrection at Lyons was a complete failure, the Commune of Paris was really a spontaneous and memorable working-class uprising. The details of that insurrection, the legislation of the Commune itself, and its violent suppression on May 28, 1871, are not strictly germane to this chapter, because, in fact, the Bakouninists played no part in it.
And, while the Bakouninists were engaged in this critical struggle with death, the spirit that had animated all their battles with Marx withdrew himself. Bakounin was tired and discouraged, and he left his friends of the Jura without advice or assistance in their now impossible task. Thus precipitately ended the efforts of the anarchists to build up a new International.
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.
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