The Philosophical Roots of the Marx-Bakunin Conflict

Abstract

abstract:: "The Philosophical Roots of the Marx-Bakunin Conflict" examines the ideological divergence between Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin, two prominent figures in the 19th-century socialist movement, whose differences shaped the trajectory of revolutionary thought. The study explores how their conflicting philosophical foundations—Marx's emphasis on historical materialism and the role of the state in achieving communism, versus Bakunin's anarchist insistence on the immediate abolition of the state and a decentralized, anti-authoritarian approach—led to profound disputes within the First International. By analyzing their views on authority, freedom, and the means of revolutionary change, the paper illuminates the enduring tensions between Marxism and anarchism, offering insights into the challenges of achieving unity in anti-capitalist movements.

Highlights

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Marx and Bakunin's Mutual Disdain

According to Marx, Bakunin was “a man devoid of all theoretical knowledge” and was “in his element as an intriguer”,1 while Bakunin believed that “...the instinct of liberty is lacking in him [Marx]; he remains from head to foot, an authoritarian”.2 Page 3

tags:: #on/marx #on/bakunin #on/conflict #on/personality

Differing Views on the State and Revolution

Marx envisioned a transitional stage between capitalism and a fully mature commu-nist society, which included a state in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat (i.e., a workers’ state), Bakunin adamantly rejected the establishment of any kind of state, including a workers’ state. In fact, this rejection is the defining principle of the school of anarchism, a term that literally translates as “no government”. For Bakunin, the only consistent, revolutionary option was to move immediately to a fully mature communist society which, both authors agreed, would be distinguished by the absence of a state. As a corol-lary to this disagreement, Marx supported attempts by independently organized workers to pursue their class interests by pressing for reforms within the bourgeois state — for example, for a reduction in the length of the working day — arguing that such victories would promote class consciousness, whereas Bakunin con-tested this proposal on the grounds that any political engagement whatsoever would constitute a perversion Page 3

of the revolutionary movement and instead advocated complete abstention from the bourgeois political arena. The proper form of a revolutionary organization was also a point of dispute. Bakunin enthusiastically created secret societies as catalysts for a revolutionary upsurge while Marx flatly rejected them. Finally, the two contested the proper role of the peasants in a revolutionary movement. Bakunin argued that they might play a leading role while Marx designated the proletariat as the exclusive, leading revolutionary agent. Page 4

tags:: #on/state #on/revolution #on/anarchism #on/marxism #on/strategy #on/organization #on/class

Bakunin's Naturalistic Philosophy of Morality and Freedom

The moral law...is indeed an actual law...because it emanates from the very nature of human society, the root basis of which is to be sought not in God but in animality.7 Page 6

justice is a natural human sentiment which permanently resides in the human constitution. Page 6

“We must distinguish well between natural laws and authoritarian, arbitrary, political, religious, criminal, and civil laws which the privileged classes have established....”10 Page 6

for Bakunin, acting freely means, above all, acting “naturally” or according to one’s natural impulses: “The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individ-ual.”11 In other words, this definition rests on the conception of humans as natural creatures governed by natural laws. To act naturally is simply to be spontaneous, to be “oneself”: Once more, Life, not science, creates life; the spontaneous action of the people themselves alone can create liberty.12 Page 6

I am a fanatical lover of liberty....I do not mean that formal liberty which is dispensed, meas-ured out, and regulated by the State....Nor do I mean that individualist, egoist, base, and fraudulent liberty extolled by the school of Jean Jacques Rousseau and every other school of bourgeois liberalism, which considers the rights of all, represented by the State, as a limit for the rights of each....No, I mean the only liberty worthy of the name, the liberty which implies the full development of all the material, intellectual, and moral capacities latent in everyone of us; the liberty which knows no other restrictions but those set by the laws of our own nature. Consequently there are, properly speaking, no restrictions, since these laws are not imposed upon us by any legislator from outside, alongside, or above ourselves. These laws are subjective, inherent in ourselves; they constitute the very basis of our being....[T]hat liberty of each man which does not find another man’s freedom a boundary but confirmation and vast extension of his own; liberty through solidarity, in equality.15 Page 7

Bakunin is basi-cally arguing that it is our nature to live together in equality, cooperating with one another, where no one exploits or is exploited. Page 7

To summarize Bakunin’s philosophy, he is operating, by and large, within the naturalistic framework estab-lished by the empiricist current of the Enlightenment. Humans are conceived as embodying a permanently fixed nature with behavior basically determined by natural laws. This state of affairs is then identified with what is good. However, when coercion enters into the relations among people, we enter the realm of the unnatural. We are alienated from our natural condition, and we lose our freedom Page 7

tags:: #on/bakunin #on/morality #on/naturalism #on/freedom #on/empiricism #on/enlightenment

Marx's Dialectical Philosophy of Historical Development

Hegel rejected the Enlightenment conviction that humans are a natu-ral species, conforming to the same kind of permanently fixed laws as the rest of the natural world. Instead, he postulated a vision of humanity engaged in a developmental process, constantly transforming and recre-ating itself in its struggle to become increasingly rational. Moreover, this undertaking was conceived as a collective endeavor since rationality, in the final analysis, is an attribute that requires, both for its original emergence and its continual exercise, the contribution of the entire species. Page 8

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social con-sciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their exis-tence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.17 Page 8

man must be in a position to live in order to be able to ‘make history.’ But life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself. The second point is that the satis-faction of the first need...leads to new needs; and this production of new needs is the first historical act.18 Page 8

While Bakunin posited a fixed, natural human essence, Marx, again following Hegel’s lead, believed that human nature itself unfolded in a developmental process whereby the specific nature of one historical epoch was shed and a new nature was donned in a perpetual process of re-creation. As humans invent ever more sophisticated instruments to employ in the production process, they simultaneously transform themselves into more rational, universal individuals Page 9

tags:: #on/marx #on/hegel #on/historicalmaterialism #on/dialectical #on/human #on/development

Marx's View on Revolution, Ethics, and Freedom

In stark contradiction to Bakunin, Marx believed that a successful revolution does not signal the recapturing of an original, natural essence that was stifled by the advent of the State and the creation of classes, but rather the creation of a new human being Page 10

Bakunin adopted a static version of human nature, identifying it with what is physically natural while Marx posited a humanity that was undergoing maturation, leaving behind a more animal-like existence as it achieved ever higher levels of rationality and self-consciousness. Page 10

While Bakunin defined the good in terms of what is “natural,” Marx relativized ethical terms historically so that each new mode of production was seen to spawn new ethical assumptions Page 10

for Marx, freedom does not amount to following one’s impulses or engaging in spontaneity. Impulses are a part of one’s natural constitution — they are not the product of choice. When we act impulsively, we act “naturally” and without conscious reflection. However, when we rationally and consciously direct our behavior, we ourselves, through thoughtful deliberation, determine our course of action Page 11

connected with the first point, freedom is not a capacity that is exercised fundamentally by an individual; rather it is for Marx undertaken primarily by a community of people Page 11

But the goal of a socialist society is to invert this relatio. Instead of individuals feeling powerless in the face of their own social institutions, by di-rectly coming together nthrough organized discourse, they place themselves in a position to alter these institutions according to their own needs and values. But this can only be accomplished when individuals are operating as a coordinated force, where they are discussing, debating and voting on which options to pursue, and where everyone has the opportunity to participate Page 12

in Marx’s opinion, a superior conception: the collective, rational determination of social policy. “Freedom in this field can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by blind forces of Nature.29 Page 12

tags:: #on/marx #on/revolution #on/human #on/ethics #on/freedom #on/socialism

The Interplay of Circumstances and Human Action

Marx postulated a dynamic relation between human intentions and the surrounding economic environment: Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.32It shows that circumstances make men just as much as men make circumstances.33 Page 13

We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere animal....We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construc-tion of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.34 Page 13

Marx insisted upon drawing a sharp boundary between nature, on the one hand, and history on the other: Nature does not produce on the one side owners of money or commodities, and on the other men possessing nothing but their own labour-power. This relation has no natural basis, neither is its social basis one that is common to all historical periods. It is clearly the result of a past historical development, the product of many economic revolutions, of the ex-tinction of a whole series of older forms of social production.35 Page 14

tags:: #on/marx #on/history #on/labor #on/circumstances

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat

From Bakunin’s perspective, the most important revolutionary act aimed at the destruction of the institution of the State: “We think that the necessarily revolutionary policy of the proletariat must have for its immediate and only object the destruction of States.”37 The State, by establishing the right of inheritance, creates economic classes and thereby introduces an “unnatural” dimension in human relations, a perversity, as it were, that can only be maintained through force which, by means of the military and the police, the State monopolizes. When the State is abolished and coercion is removed, people can immediately revert back to their “natural” condition and recapture their “natural” freedom. No transitional period is required. The dic-tatorship of the proletariat, as another State, would only serve to repeat the mistakes of the past. Page 15

according to Marx, if the proletariat is truly determined to suc-ceed, it must be prepared to use decisive force, if the situation demands. Therefore the working class must establish its own coercive apparatus, i.e. state, so that it can defend its interests and enforce a genuine form of majority rule. Otherwise it will find itself at the mercy of a counterrevolution. Page 15

The determination to smash the bourgeois state was a cornerstone of Marx’s political program. Its destruction opens the door to the political participation of the entire working class where everyone can have a voice in shaping public policy Page 16

...after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has be-come not only a means of life, but life’s prime want, after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of coopera-tive wealth flow more abundantly — only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banner: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!’47 Page 17

tags:: #on/state #on/revolution #on/dictatorshipoftheproletariat #on/marx #on/bakunin #on/coercion

Organizational Differences and the Role of the Masses

This association stems from the conviction that revolutions are never made by individuals or even by secret societies. They come about of themselves, produced by the force of things, the tide of events and facts....All that a well-organized secret society can do is first to assist the birth of the revolution by sowing ideas corresponding to the instincts of the masses, then to organize, not the army of the revolution — the army must always be the people — but a kind of revolutionary general staff made up of devoted, hardworking and intelligent men, and above all of sincere friends of the people, without ambition or vanity, and capable of acting as intermediaries between the revolutionary idea and the popular instinct. Therefore there should be no vast number of these individuals....Two or three hundred revo-lutionaries are enough for the largest country’s organization.48 Page 18

First, the emphasis is placed on the instincts of the masses for the fuel that will erupt in a revolutionary upheaval. Second, there is no emphasis on organizing the masses themselves. Third, the secret societies act somewhat as midwives, assisting in the birth of the revolution but are certainly not considered the main engine of it. They engage in translating the instincts of the masses into revolutionary concepts. Fourth, precisely because these societies are in fact secret, they are not elected by the masses, but are self-appointed representatives of the masses. They themselves determine whether they are genuinely hardworking and intelligent Page 18

Marx completely ignores a most important element in the historic development of humanity, that is, the temperament and particular character of each race and each people, a temperament and a character which are themselves the natural product of a multitude of ethnological, climatological, economic and historic causes....Among these elements...there is Page 18

one whose action is completely decisive in the particular history of each people; it is the intensity of the spirit of revolt....This instinct is a fact which is completely primordial and animalistic....[I]t is a matter of temperament rather than intellectual and moral character....49 Page 19

In order to mount a revolution, Bakunin’s self-appointed leaders must simply mix with the oppressed so that this instinct to revolt might be ignited. Then, because instincts are true and just, one can depend on them entirely to push the revolution to a successful conclusion Page 19

without class consciousness, members of the proletariat assume that their miserable condition is a function of their own individual initiative, or lack thereof, or simply bad luck, as opposed to resulting from naked class exploitation. But class consciousness is not simply gained instinctively since the bourgeoisie, for example, is relentlessly on a campaign to assert ideological hegemony by arguing that capitalism represents the highest achievement in individual freedom, fairness in the distribution of wealth, etc Page 19

tags:: #on/organization #on/revolution #on/masses #on/instinct #on/classconsciousness #on/leadership #on/bakunin #on/marx

The Importance of Working-Class Organization

But in order for education to take place, the working class must be organized, and one such venue is the trade union movement: “It is in trade unions that workers educate themselves and become socialists, because under their very eyes and every day the struggle with capital is taking place.”52 Page 19

A political party is the organ through which the working class develops and expresses its class consciousness. It is the instrument with which it articulates and promotes its own class interests in opposition to the bourgeoisie Page 19

the proletariat must see to it: I. that no groups of workers are barred on any pretext or by any kind of trickery on the part of local authorities or government commissioners. II. that everywhere workers’ candidates are put up alongside the bourgeois-democratic candi-dates, that they are as far as possible members of the League, and that their election is promoted by all possible means. Even where there is no prospect whatever of their being elected, the workers must put up their own candidates in order to preserve their independ-ence, to count their forces and to lay before the public their revolutionary attitude and party standpoint. In this connection they must not allow themselves to be bribed by such arguments of the democrats as, for example, that by so doing they are splitting the democratic party and giving the reactionaries the possibility of victory.52a Page 20

In all appropriations up to now, a mass of individuals remained subser-vient to a single instrument of production; in the appropriation by the proletarians, a mass of instruments of production must be made subject to each individual, and property to all. Modern universal intercourse can be controlled by individuals, only when controlled by all.53 Page 20

while Bakunin was intent on organizing secret societies and relying on the instincts of the masses to push the revolution to a successful conclusion, Marx was urging that the workers themselves become organized. These working class organizations not only serve as vehicles for education, but they have the potential to become powerful weapons aimed at challenging the bourgeoisie for state power. In the process of this struggle, workers not only deepen their self-consciousness as an oppressed class, but gradually acquire the realization that they are capable of seizing control of society and running it in their own interests. Page 20

tags:: #on/marx #on/organization #on/classconsciousness #on/tradeunion #on/politicalparty #on/proletariat #on/revolution

Disagreements on Political Reforms

Bakunin consistently condemned all efforts on the part of the proletariat to improve its lot by pressing for specific legislation that seemed in its interest. The State, after all, was an unnatural excrescence, implying that any participation in it would only contaminate the revolutionary movement. Marx, on the other hand, not only regarded this political engagement as permissible but even, at times, as indispensable, provided that the conquest of state power was not on the immediate agenda, either because the objective conditions were lacking or because the proletariat had not already achieved the appropriate level of class consciousness and organization Page 21

every movement in which the working class as a class confronts the ruling classes and tries to constrain them by pressure from without is a political move-ment. For instance, the attempt by strikes, etc., in a particular factory or even in a particular trade to compel individual capitalists to reduce the working day, is a purely economic move-ment. On the other hand the movement to force through an eight-hour, etc. law is a political movement. And in this way, out of the separate economic movements of the workers there grows up everywhere a political movement, that is to say, a class movement, with the object of enforcing its interests in a general form, in a form possessing general, socially coercive force.54 Page 21

tags:: #on/marx #on/bakunin #on/politicalreform #on/state #on/revolution #on/strategy

The Revolutionary Agent and the Role of the Peasants

Another strategical disagreement dividing Marx and Bakunin centered around the question of who would lead the revolution. Both agreed that the proletariat would play a key role, but for Marx the proletariat was the exclusive, leading revolutionary agent while Bakunin entertained the possibility that the peasants and even the lumpenproletariat (the unemployed, common criminals, etc.) could rise to the occasion Page 22

By flower of the proletariat, I mean precisely that eternal ‘meat’,...that great rabble of the people (underdogs, ‘dregs of society’) ordinarily designated by Marx and Engels in the picturesque and contemptuous phrase lumpenproletariat. I have in mind the ‘riffraff’, that ‘rabble’ almost unpolluted by bourgeois civilization, which carries in its inner being and in its aspirations...all the seeds of the socialism of the future....56 Page 22

Marx consistently argued that the proletariat alone was the revolutionary agent: “Of all classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.”57 Page 22

Because Marx believed human nature was shaped by the economy, he analyzed the possible revolutionary agents by analyzing how the economy would influence their development. And economic considerations led him to conclude that the peasants could not play a leading revolutionary role Page 22

Marx also believed that the situation of the peasants, not only prohibited them from attaining class consciousness, but from becoming a truly revolutionary class: The small holding peasants form a vast mass, the members of which live in similar condi-tions but without entering into manifold relations with one another. Their mode of produc- Page 22

tion isolates them from one another instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse....Their field of production, the small holding, admits of no division of labor in its cultivation, no application of science and, therefore, no diversity of development, no variety of talent, no wealth of social relationships. Each individual peasant family is almost self-sufficient; it itself directly produces the major part of its consumption and thus acquires its means of life more through exchange with nature than in intercourse with society. A small holding, a peasant and his family; alongside them another small holding, another peasant and another family....In so far as millions of families live under economic conditions of existence that sepa-rate their mode of life, their interests and their culture from those of other classes, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they form a class. In so far as there is a merely local interconnection among these small-holding peasants, and the identity of their interests be-gets no community, no national bond and no political organization among them, they do not form a class.58 Page 23

tags:: #on/revolution #on/class #on/proletariat #on/peasants #on/lumpenproletariat #on/marx #on/bakunin

Differing Definitions of Human Nature and Freedom

We can now see that when Marxists and anarchists refer to such concepts as “human nature” and “freedom”, they have diametrically opposed definitions in mind and therefore are frequently talking at cross-purposes. Bakunin’s notion of spontaneity stands starkly opposed to Marx’s notion of collective, rational action Page 24

tags:: #on/marx #on/bakunin #on/humannature #on/freedom #on/spontaneity #on/rationality

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