CHAPTER VIII

THE BATTLE BETWEEN MARX AND BAKOUNIN

At the moment when the future of the International seemed most promising and the political ideas of Marx were actually taking root in nearly all countries, an application was received by the General Council in London to admit the Alliance of Social Democracy. This, we will remember, was the organization that Bakounin had formed in 1868 and was the popular section of that remarkable secret hierarchy which he had endeavored to establish in 1864. The General Council declined to admit the Alliance, on grounds which proved later to be well founded, namely, that schisms would undoubtedly be encouraged if the International should permit an organization with an entirely different program and policies to join it in a body. Nevertheless, the General Council declared that the members of the Alliance could affiliate themselves as individuals with the various national sections. After considerable debate, Bakounin and his followers decided to abandon the Alliance and to join the International. Whether the Alliance was in fact abolished is still open to question, but in any case Bakounin appeared in the International toward the end of the sixties, to challenge all the theories of Marx and to offer, in their stead, his own philosophy of universal revolution. Anarchism as the end and terrorism as the means were thus injected into the organization at its most formative period, when the laboring classes of all Europe had just begun to write their program, evolve their principles, and define their tactics. With great force and magnetism, Bakounin undertook his war upon the General Council, and those who recall the period will realize that nothing could have more nearly expressed the occasional spirit of the masses—the very spirit that Marx and Engels were endeavoring to change—than exactly the methods proposed by Bakounin.

Whether it were better to move gradually and peacefully along what seemed a never-ending road to emancipation or to begin the revolution at once by insurrection and civil war—this was in reality the question which, from that moment on, agitated the International. It had always troubled more or less the earlier organizations of labor, and now, aided by Bakounin's eloquence and fiery revolutionism, it became the great bone of contention throughout Europe. The struggles in the International between those who became known later as the anarchists and the socialists remind one of certain Greek stories, in which the outstanding figures seem to impersonate mighty forces, and it is not impossible that one day they may serve as material for a social epic. We all know to-day the interminable study that engages the theologians in their attempts to describe the battles and schisms in the early Christian Church. And there can be no doubt that, if socialism fulfills the purpose which its advocates have in mind, these early struggles in its history will become the object of endless research and commentary. The calumnies, the feuds, the misunderstandings, the clashing of doctrines, the antagonism of the ruling spirits, the plots and conspiracies, the victories and defeats—all these various phases of this war to the death between socialists and anarchists—will in that case present to history the most vital struggle of this age. But, whatever may be the outcome of the socialist movement, it is hardly too much to say that to both anarchists and socialists these struggles seemed, at the time they were taking place, of supreme importance to the destinies of humanity.

The contending titans of this war were, of course, Karl Marx and Michael Bakounin. It is hardly necessary to go into the personal feud that played so conspicuous a part in the struggle between them. Perhaps no one at this late day can prove what Marx and his friends themselves were unable to prove—although they never ceased repeating the allegations—that Bakounin was a spy of the Russian Government, that his life had been thrice spared through the influence of that Government, that he was treacherous and dishonest, and that his sole purpose was to disrupt and destroy the International Working Men's Association. Nor is it necessary to consider the charges made against Marx—some of them time has already taken care of—that he was domineering, malicious, and ambitious, that his spirit was actuated by intrigue, and that, when he conceived a dislike for anyone, he was merciless and conscienceless in his warfare on that one. Incompatibility of temperament and of personality played its part in the battles between these two, but, even had there been no mutual dislike, the differences between their principles and tactics would have necessitated a battle à outrance.

For twenty years before the birth of the International, Marx and Bakounin had crossed and recrossed each other's circle. They had always quarreled. There was a mutual fascination, due perhaps to an innate antagonism, that brought them again and again together at critical periods. At times there seemed a chance of reconciliation, but they no more touched each other than immediately there flared forth the old animosity. When Bakounin left Russia in 1843, he met Proudhon and Marx in Paris. At that period the doctrines of all three were germinating. Bakounin had already written, "The desire for destruction is at the same time a creative desire." [(1)] Proudhon had begun to formulate the principles of anarchism, and Marx the principles of socialism. "He was much more advanced than I was," wrote Bakounin of Marx at this period. "I knew nothing then of political economy, I was not yet freed from metaphysical abstraction, and my socialism was only instinctive.... It was precisely at this epoch that he elaborated the first fundamentals of his present system. We saw each other rather often, for I respected him deeply for his science and for his passionate and serious devotion, although always mingled with personal vanity, to the cause of the proletariat, and I sought with eagerness his conversation, which was always instructive and witty—when it was not inspired with mean hatred, which, too often, alas, was the case. Never, however, was there frank intimacy between us. Our temperaments did not allow that. He called me a sentimental idealist, and he was right; I called him a vain man, perfidious and artful, and I was right also." [(2)] This mutual dislike and even distrust subsisted to the end.

Certain events in 1848 widened the gulf between them. At the news of the outbreak of the revolution in Paris, hundreds of the restless spirits hurried there to take a hand in the situation. And after the proclamation of the Republic they began to consider various projects of carrying the revolution into their own countries. Plans were being discussed for organizing legions to invade foreign countries, and a number of the German communists entered heartily into the plan of Herwegh, the erratic German poet—"the iron lark"—who led a band of revolutionists into Baden. "We arose vehemently against these attempts to play at revolution," says Engels, speaking for himself and Marx. "In the state of fermentation which then existed in Germany, to carry into our country an invasion which was destined to import the revolution by force, was to injure the revolution in Germany, to consolidate the governments, and ... to deliver the legions over defenseless to the German troops." [(3)] Wilhelm Liebknecht, then twenty-two years of age, who was in favor of Herwegh's project, wrote afterward of Marx's opposition. Marx "understood that the plan of organizing 'foreign legions' for the purpose of carrying the revolution into other countries emanated from the French bourgeois-republicans, and that the 'movement' had been artificially inspired with the twofold intention of getting rid of troublesome elements and of carrying off the foreign laborers whose competition made itself doubly felt during this grave business crisis." [(4)]

Undeterred by Marx, Herwegh marshaled his "legions" and entered Baden, to be utterly crushed, exactly as Marx had foreseen. A quarrel then arose between Marx and Bakounin over Herwegh's project. Far from changing Marx's mind, however, it made him suspect Bakounin as perhaps in the pay of the reactionaries. In any case, he made no effort to prevent the Neue Rheinische Zeitung from printing shortly after the following: "Yesterday it was asserted that George Sand was in possession of papers which seriously compromised the Russian who has been banished from here, Michael Bakounin, and represented him as an instrument or an agent of Russia, newly enrolled, to whom is attributed the leading part in the recent arrest of the unfortunate Poles. George Sand has shown these papers to some of her friends." [(5)] Marx later printed Bakounin's answer to these charges—which were, in fact, groundless—and in his letters to the New York Tribune (1852) even commended Bakounin for his services in the Dresden uprising of 1849. [(6)] Nevertheless, there is no doubt that to the end Marx believed Bakounin to be a tool of the enemy. These quarrels are important only as they are prophetic in thus early disclosing the gulf between Marx and Bakounin in their conception of revolutionary activity. Although profoundly revolutionary, Marx was also rigidly rational. He had no patience, and not an iota of mercy, for those who lost their heads and attempted to lead the workers into violent outbreaks that could result only in a massacre. On this point he would make no concessions, and anyone who attempted such suicidal madness was in Marx's mind either an imbecile or a paid agent provocateur. The failure of Herwegh's project forced Bakounin to admit later that Marx had been right. Yet, as we know, with Bakounin's advancing years the passion for insurrections became with him almost a mania.