"Because I demand the economic and social equalisation of classes and individuals, because, with the Workers' Congress of Brussels, I have declared myself in favour of collective property, I have been reproached with being a Communist. What difference, I have been asked, is there between Communism and Collectivism. I am really astounded that M. Chaudey does not understand this difference, he who is the testamentary executor of Proudhon! I detest Communism, because it is the negation of liberty, and I cannot conceive anything human without liberty. I am not a Communist, because Communism concentrates and causes all the forces of society to be absorbed by the State, because it necessarily ends in the centralisation of property in the hands of the State, while I desire the abolition of the State—the radical extirpation of this principle of the authority and the tutelage of the State, which, under the pretext of moralising and civilising men, has until now enslaved, oppressed, exploited, and depraved them. I desire the organisation of society and of collective or social property from below upwards, by means of free association, and not from above downwards by means of some authority of some sort. Desiring the abolition of the State, I desire the abolition of property individually hereditary, which is nothing but an institution of the State, nothing but a result of the principle of the State. This is the sense, gentlemen, in which I am a Collectivist, and not at all a Communist."
In another speech at the same Congress Bakounine reiterates what he had already said of "Statist" Communism. "It is not we, gentlemen," he said, "who systematically deny all authority and all tutelary powers, and who in the name of Liberty demand the very abolition of the "authoritarian" principle of the State; it is not we who will recognise any sort of political and social organisation whatever, that is not founded upon the most complete liberty of every one.... But I am in favour of collective property, because I am convinced that so long as property, individually hereditary, exists, the equality of the first start, the realisation of equality, economical and social, will be impossible."[34] This is not particularly lucid as a statement of principles. But it is sufficiently significant from the "biographical" point of view.
We do not insist upon the ineptitude of the expression "the economic and social equalisation of classes;" the General Council of the International dealt with that long ago.[35] We would only remark that the above quotations show that Bakounine—
1. Combats the State and "Communism" in the name of "the most complete liberty of everybody;"
2. Combats property, "individually hereditary," in the name of economic equality;
3. Regards this property as "an institution of the State," as a "consequence of the very principles of the State;"
4. Has no objection to individual property, if it is not hereditary; has no objection to the right of inheritance, if it is not individual.
In other words:
1. Bakounine is quite at one with Proudhon so far as concerns the negation of the State and Communism;
2. To this negation he adds another, that of property, individually hereditary;