Bakuninism

The extreme anarchist current of the petty bourgeoisie that emerged in the late 1860s represented by Bakunin, “the father of anarchism”. Bakuninism was the chief enemy within the International in the later period of the First International, and it was the hostile current that had the longest duration of struggle and the greatest influence within the First International.

The views of Bakuninism are mainly concentrated in Bakunin’s two works, God and the State, Statism and Anarchy. Its philosophical foundation was Hegelian idealism and politically, it advocated anarchism. The main contents of Bakuninism include the following aspects: (1) The capitalist system was not the root cause of evil; it was the State that is the root cause of human unfreedom and misery. The State was a product of the lower stages of mankind, and the task of all States was to dominate the weak at home and to suppress the small abroad; the State was the root cause of private property, inequality and exploitation. Therefore, in order for the individual to achieve individual emancipation, freedom and happiness, it was necessary to oppose the State in all its forms, and the elimination of all State and political power was the primary task of the workers' movement. Bakuninism even advocates the destruction of the State within 24 hours and the establishment in its place of a fully free society “without government, without authority, without orders, without obedience, without punishment”. (2) Opposing all forms of political struggle. Bakunin opposed all proletarian political parties and organized political struggle of the proletariat. He held that revolution was a spontaneous “random action”, which does not require any political organization, guidance or legislation, advocated “sudden uprisings” launched by a few “revolutionaries”, believing that an uprising does not require a large number of people, but only a hundred serious and united “revolutionaries”. (3) “Abolishing the right of inheritance” as the starting point of the revolution. Bakunin held that the right of inheritance was the root cause of social inequality, and only by abolishing inheritance could private property be eliminated and “social and class equality” be achieved. (4) Denying the historical role of the proletariat and regarding the lumpenproletariat and the petty bourgeoisie as the driving force of social revolution. (5) Advocating the replacement of the State by anarchic “autonomous communes”. In autonomous communes there was no authority, only absolute individual freedom and absolute democracy. (6) Abolition of religion.

Bakuninism is an extreme anarchism based on materialism in the conception of nature and idealism in the conception of society. Its proposition is a medley of the communist idea of collective property, Proudhonist idea of absolute freedom, anarchist ideas, Saint-Simon’s idea of abolishing the right of inheritance and the petty-bourgeois idea of “class equality”. Marx and Engels carried out a profound critique of Bakuninism. Marx once pointed out: “For Mr. Bakunin the theory (the assembled rubbish he has scraped together from Proudhon, St. Simon, etc.) is a secondary affair—merely a means to his personal self-assertion. If he is a nonentity as a theorist he is in his element as an intriguer.” Engels also called Bakuninism “a medley of Proudhonism and Communism”.

Bakunin proclaimed absolute freedom and equality without actually understanding what freedom and equality are. According to the Marxist point of view, neither the mutual coordination of the bourgeoisie and the working class, nor the equality of the classes preached by the bourgeois socialists, but the abolition of the classes, which no bourgeoisie can ever do, nor can it ever set as a goal. Bakuninism held that all authority was evil, and that only “absolute autonomy” was the ideal society. Engels pointed out: “Every individual and every community is autonomous, but as to how a society, even of only two people, is possible unless each gives up some of his autonomy—Bakunin again remains silent.” The propositions of Bakuninism are, in fact, a counter-revolutionary duplicity “under the mask of the most extreme anarchism.”