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Updated: May 24, 2025
Marx attacked him in print, saying, in effect, that the movement for Bohemian independence was futile because the Slavs had no future, at any rate in those regions where they hap- pened to be subject to Germany and Austria. Bakunin accused Mars of German patriotism in this matter, and Marx accused him of Pan-Slavism, no doubt in both cases justly.
Be free men and trust the nature of a free man: all his faults proceed from the power which he exercises over his own kind or under which he groans." One more Russian, a déclassé, as Bakunin was, has exercised considerable influence on the development of modern Anarchism; and, in fact, although he has introduced but few new doctrines into it, has made, in the truest sense, a school of his own.
But the State, as the opponents of the "Alliance" maliciously said, in the shape of two companies of the National Guard, found a way into Lyons through a gate which the rioters had forgotten to watch, swept the Anarchists out of the Town Hall, and caused Bakunin to seek his way back to Geneva in great haste.
"The idea of God," says Bakunin, "implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive denial of human freedom, and leads necessarily to the enslaving of humanity, both in theory and practice.... The freedom of man consists solely in following natural laws, because he has recognised them himself as such, and not because they are imposed upon him from without by the will of another, whether divine or human, collective or individual.... We reject all legislation, every authority, and every privileged, recognised official and legal influence, even if it has proceeded from the exercise of universal suffrage, since it could only benefit a ruling and exploiting minority against the interests of the great enslaved majority."
The military advice of experienced Polish officers was brought to bear on the commandant, whose incapacity had not been slow to reveal itself; Bakunin, who openly confessed that he understood nothing of pure strategy, never moved from the Town Hall, but remained at Heubner's side, giving advice and information in every direction with wonderful sangfroid.
Paul of modern Anarchism. It may be so. The Anarchism of violence only acquired significance, owing to later circumstances in which Bakunin had no share; but the kind of prelude of the Anarchist movement, which was noticeable at the end of the sixties and beginning of the seventies, may certainly be attributed to the influence of Bakunin.
His views as to the nearest goal, after general expropriation and the annihilation of all powers, are almost exclusively derived from Proudhon's, and at most go beyond them only in so far as Bakunin does not recognise as obligatory that coalescence of "productive" groups into a higher collective entity, which Proudhon regarded as an organic society, but merely allows them to remain as groups.
In 1841 Bakunin went to Berlin, and next year to Dresden, where he studied philosophy, chiefly Hegel's but was also introduced by Ruge into the German democratic movement. Pursued by Russian agents, he went in 1843 to Paris, and thence to Switzerland, where he became an active member of the Communist-Socialist movement.
Kropotkin, who had already helped him with the Avantgarde, took his place, and founded in Geneva the Révolte, directing with a feverish activity the work originally begun by Bakunin into new channels, and afterwards doing so from London. Révolte, July 8, 1862.
The question has not unnaturally been raised, What had Bakunin the cosmopolitan to do at such an institution of national Chauvinism as the Congress? What had the ultra-radical Democrat and sworn enemy of the Czar to do with a congress held by the favour of Nicholas, and visited by orthodox Archimandrites, by the envoys of Slav princes, and privy councillors decorated with Russian orders?
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