A history of socialism

by Thomas Kirkup

It follows that he will not admit of any privileged position or class, for ‘it is the peculiarity of privilege and of every privileged position to kill the intellect and heart of man. The privileged man, whether he be privileged politically or economically, is a man depraved in intellect and heart.’ ‘In a word, we object to all legislation, all authority, and all influence, privileged, patented, official and legal, even when it has proceeded from universal suffrage, convinced that it must always turn to the profit of a dominating and exploiting minority, against the interests of the immense majority enslaved.’

The following extracts taken from the programme of the International Social Democratic Alliance, which he founded, will help to complete our knowledge of the views of this extraordinary agitator. The Alliance declares itself atheistic; it seeks the abolition of all religions, the displacement of faith by science and of divine justice by human justice, the abolition of marriage as a political, religious, legal, and bourgeois institution. The Alliance demands above all things the definite and complete abolition of classes, and political, economic, and social equality of individuals and sexes, and abolition of inheritance, so that in the future every man may enjoy a like share in the produce of labour; that land and soil, instruments of labour, and all other capital, becoming the common property of the whole society, may be used only by the workers—that is, by associations of cultivators and industrialists. It looks forward to the final solution of the social question through the universal and international solidarity of the workers of all countries, and condemns every policy grounded on so-called patriotism and national jealousy. It demands the universal federation of all local associations through the principle of freedom.

Bakunin’s methods of realising his revolutionary programme are suited to his principles. He would make all haste to sweep away the political and social institutions that prevent the realisation of his plans for the future. The spirit of destruction reaches its climax in the Revolutionary Catechism, which has been attributed to Bakunin, but which contains extreme statements that do not consist with his acknowledged writings. It is at least a product of the school of Bakunin, and as such is worthy of attention. The spirit of revolution could not further go than it does in this document. The revolutionist, as the Catechism would recommend him to be, is a consecrated man, who will allow no private interests or feelings, and no scruples of religion, patriotism, or morality, to turn him aside from his mission, the aim of which is by all available means to overturn the existing society. His work is merciless and universal destruction. The future organisation will doubtless proceed out of the movement and life of the people, but it is the concern of coming generations. In the meantime all that Bakunin enables us to see as promise of future reconstruction is the free federation of free associations—associations of which we find the type in the Russian commune.

The influence of Bakunin was felt chiefly on the socialist movement in Southern Europe. The important risings in Spain in 1873 were due to his activity. In the later revolutionary movement of Italy his influence superseded that of Mazzini, for there, as elsewhere, the purely political interest had yielded to the social in the minds of the most advanced.

The doctrines of Bakunin have also left their mark on the recent social history of France and French Switzerland. About 1879 the anarchist propaganda showed signs of activity in Lyons and the surrounding industrial centres. Some disturbances among the miners at Montceau-les-Mines in 1882, also provoked the attention of the police and Government, with the result that sixty-six persons were accused of belonging to an international association with anarchist principles. Of the accused the most notable was Prince Kropotkine, who, with the eminent French geographer Elisée Reclus and the Russian Lavroff, may be regarded as the greatest recent exponents of anarchism.

There is no more interesting figure in the recent revolutionary history of Europe than Prince Kropotkine. Like Bakunin, he belongs by birth to the highest aristocracy of Russia; his family, it was sometimes said among his familiar friends, had a better right to the throne of that country than the present dynasty. A man of science of European fame, of kindly nature and courteous manners, it may seem strange that he should be an avowed champion of the most destructive creed now extant. A few of the leading facts of his life, as he gave them in his defence at the trial at Lyons in 1883, may throw some light on that question.[^[2]]

His father was an owner of serfs, and from his childhood he had been witness to scenes like those narrated by the American novelist in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The sight of the cruelties suffered by the oppressed class had taught him to love them. At sixteen he entered the school of pages at the Imperial Court, and if he had learned in the cabin to love the people, he learned at the Court to detest the great. In the army and the administration he saw the hopelessness of expecting reforms from the reactionary Russian Government. For some time afterwards he had devoted himself to scientific work. When the social movement began, Kropotkine joined it. The demands made by the new party for more liberty met with a simple response from the Government: they were thrown into prison, where their treatment was terrible. In the prison where the Prince was detained nine lost their reason and eleven committed suicide. He fell seriously ill, and was carried to the hospital, from which he made his escape. In Switzerland, where he found refuge, he witnessed the sufferings of the people caused by the crisis in the watch manufacture; everywhere the like miseries, due to the like social and political evils. Was it surprising that he should seek to remedy them by the transformation of society?

The record[^[3]] of the great anarchist trial at Lyons in 1883, to which we have already referred, is an historical document of the first importance. Every one who wishes to understand the causes, motives, and aims of the anarchist movement should study it carefully. At the trial a declaration of opinion was signed by the accused. The following extracts which give the purport of this declaration may be useful in elucidating the anarchist position. What they aim at is the most absolute freedom, the most complete satisfaction of human wants, without other limit than the impossibilities of Nature and the wants of their neighbours, equally worthy of respect. They object to all authority and all government on principle, and in all human relations would, in place of legal and administrative control, substitute free contract, perpetually subject to revision and cancelment. But, as no freedom is possible in a society where capital is monopolised by a diminishing minority, they believe that capital, the common inheritance of humanity, since it is the fruit of the co-operation of past and present generations, ought to be at the disposal of all, so that no man be excluded from it, and no man seize part of it to the detriment of the rest. In a word, they wish equality, equality of fact, as corollary, or rather as primordial condition of freedom. From each one according to his faculties; to each one according to his needs. They demand bread for all, science for all, work for all; for all, too, independence and justice.

As one of the accused maintained, even a Government based on universal suffrage gives them no scope for effective action in the deliverance of the poor, as of the eight million electors of France only some half a million are in a position to give a free vote. In such a state of affairs, and in view of the continued misery and degradation of the proletariat, they proclaim the sacred right of insurrection as the ultima ratio servorum.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the trial was the defence of Émile Gautier before the Court of Appeal. Gautier was described by the Public Prosecutor as a serious intelligence gone astray, a licentiate in law who had passed brilliant examinations, a powerful orator who might be considered as the apostle of the anarchist idea in France. He was only twenty-nine years of age. In his defence Gautier described with passionate eloquence how he, the son of a law-officer (huissier), had been converted to revolution and anarchism by the sight in court of the daily miseries of debtors and bankrupts and other victims of a capitalist society. As Voltaire is said to have had an attack of fever at every anniversary of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, so he, far away in Brittany, was seized with a fever of rage and of bitter indignation when the calendar brought round the accursed dates at which bills and rents became due.