The Alliance and the I.W.M.A.—X 563 

easily become the idol of the people, the first peasant tsar,* mighty not through 
fear, but through the love, liberty and prosperity of his people. Relying on that 
people, he could become the saviour and head of the entire Slav world... 

“For that all that was necessary was a Russian heart, broad and strong in 
magnanimity and truth. All Russian and Slav living reality went to him with open 
arms, ready to serve as a pedestal for his historic greatness.” 

Bakunin then demands the abolition of the state of Peter 
the Great, of the German state, and the creation of the “new 
Russia’. The fulfilment of this task is entrusted to Alexander II. 

“His beginning was magnificent. He proclaimed freedom for the people, 
freedom and a new life after a thousand years of slavery. It seemed as if he wanted 
to organise the Russia of the peasants” (zemskaya Rossiya), “because in Peter’s state 
a free people was unthinkable. On February 19, 1861, in spite of all the 
shortcomings and absurd contradictions in the Ukase on the Emancipation of the 
peasants, Alexander II was the greatest, most loved and most powerful tsar who 
ever existed in Russia.”— However, “liberty is contrary to all the instincts of 
Alexander II’’, because he is German, and ‘fa German will never understand and 
never love the Russia of the peasants ... he only dreamed of strengthening the 
edifice of Peter’s state ... having undertaken a thing that is fatal and impossible, he 
is working to his own ruin and that of his house, and he is on the point of 
plunging Russia into a bloody revolution”. 

According to Bakunin, all the contradictions of the ukase on 
emancipation, all the shootings of peasants, the student dis- 
turbances, all the terror, in a word, 

“is fully explained by the tsar’s lack of a Russian spirit and of a heart loving the 
people, by his insane striving to preserve Peter’s state at all costs ... and yet it is he, 
he alone who could accomplish in Russia the most serious and most beneficial 
revolution without shedding a drop of blood. He can still do so now. If we despair 
of the peaceful outcome, it is not because it would be too late, but because we have 
ended up by despairing of Alexander HI and his ability to understand what is the 
only way of saving himself and Russia. To stop the movement of the people who 
are wakening up after a thousand years of sleep is impossible. But if the tsar were 
to put himself firmly and boldly at the head of the movement, his power for the 
good and the glory of Russia would be unlimited.” 

For this, he would only have to give the peasants land, liberty, 
and _ SELF-GOVERNMENT. 

“Do not fear that regional SELF-GOVERNMENT might break the ties between the 
provinces, that the unity of the Russian land might be shaken; the autonomy of the 
provinces will be only administrative, internally legislative, juridical, but not 
political. And in no country, with the exception, perhaps, of France, is the people 
endowed to the same extent as in Russia with a sense of unity, of harmony, of 
integrity of the state, and of national greatness.” 

* The title of peasant tsar (Zemsky Tsar) conferred on Alexander II was 
invented by Bakunin and the Kolokol. 

At that time, the convocation of a national assembly* was being 
demanded in Russia. Some wanted it to resolve the financial 
difficulties, others to put an end to the monarchy. Bakunin 
wanted it to express the unity of Russia and to consolidate the 
power and greatness of the tsar. 

“Since the unity of Russia has hitherto found its expression only in the person 
of the tsar, it needs another representation, that of a national assembly... The 
question is not to know whether or not there will be a revolution, but whether it 
will be peaceful or bloody. It will be peaceful and beneficial if the tsar, putting 
himself at the head of the popular movement, undertakes, with the national 
assembly, broadly and resolutely to transform Russia radically in the spirit of 
freedom; but if he wishes to retreat, or stops at half-measures, the revolution will 
be frightful. It will then take on the character of a pitiless massacre in consequence 
of the uprising of the entire people... Alexander II can still save Russia from total 
ruin and from bloodshed.” 

Thus, in 1862, the revolution, for Bakunin, meant the total ruin 
of Russia, and he beseeched the tsar to save the country from it. 
For many Russian revolutionaries, the convocation of a national 
assembly would be equivalent to the collapse of the imperial 
house; but Bakunin puts an end to their hopes and announces to 
them that 

“a national assembly will be against them and for the tsar. And if the national 
assembly should be hostile to the tsar? It is not possible; it is the people who will 
send their delegates, the people whose faith in the tsar is without limits to this day 
and who respect everything about him. Whence, then, would the hostility come?.. 
There is no doubt that if the tsar convoked the national assembly now” (February 
1862), “he would, for the first time, find himself surrounded by men sincerely 
devoted to him. If the anarchy? lasts a few years longer, the attitudes of the people 
may change. Life moves fast in our times. But, at present the people are for the 
tsar and against the nobility, against the officials, against everything that wears 
German dress” (that is to say, European-style dress). “In the official Russian camp, 
all are enemies of the people, all except the tsar. Who, then, will try to speak to the 
people against the tsar? And even if someone should try to do so, would the people 
believe him? Was it not the tsar who emancipated the peasants against the will of the 
nobility, against the general desire of the officials? 

“Through their delegates, the Russian people will meet their tsar face to face 
for the first ume. It is a decisive moment, critical to the highest degree. Will they 
like one another? The whole future of the tsar and of Russia will depend on this 
meeting. The confidence and devotion of the delegates towards the tsar will be 
boundless. Relying on them, going to meet them with faith and love, he will elevate 
his throne to a height and a security which it has never attained before. But what 
if, instead of the tsar-emancipator, the people’s¢ tsar, the delegates find in him a 

4 In the Russian text here and subsequently Bakunin uses the term 
“vsenarodny Zemsky Sobor” (“elective council of the whole people”’).— Ed. 

b The Russian text has: “bezuryaditsa” (“lack of order”).— Ed. 

¢ The Russian text has: “zemsky”. “‘Zemsky tzar” —tsar elected by all the people of 
the land, or by the Zemstvo.— Ed. 

The Alliance and the I.W.M.A.—X 565 

Petersburg emperor in Prussian uniform, a narrow-hearted German? What if, 
instead of the expected liberty, the tsar gives them nothing, or next to nothing?.. 
Then, woe to tsarism! At least it will be the end of the Petersburg, German, 
Holstein-Gottorp emperorship. 

“If, at this fatal moment, when the question of life or death, of peace or blood, 
is about to be decided for the whole of Russia, if the tsar of the people were to 
appear before the national assembly as a good and loyal tsar, loving Russia, ready to 
give the people an organisation according to its will, what could he not do with 
such a people! Who would dare to rise up against him? Peace and confidence 
would be re-established as if by a miracle, money would be found, and everything 
would be arranged simply, naturally, without prejudice to anybody, and to the 
general satisfaction. Gutded by such a tsar, the national assembly would create a new 
Russia. No malevolent attempt, no hostile force, would be in a state to fight against 
the reunited might of the tsar and the people... May one hope that this alliance 
will become fact? We have every reason to say No. 

Whatever he might say, Bakunin does not despair of dragging 
his tsar along, and in order to persuade him, he threatens him 
with the revolutionary youth who, if the tsar does not make haste, 
will be able to accomplish its mission and find its way to the 
people. 

“And why is this youth not for you, but against you? That is a great misfortune 
for you ... they need, above all, liberty and truth. But why has it abandoned the 
tsar? Why has it declared itself against him who first gave liberty to the people?... 
Has it perhaps let itself be carried away by the abstract revolutionary ideal and the 
sonorous word ‘republic’? That may be partly so, but it is only a secondary and 
superficial cause. The majority of our progressive youth understands weil that 
Western abstractions, whether conservative, bourgeois, liberal, and democratic, are not 
applicable to the Russian movement... The Russian people is not moved according to 

abstract principles ... the Western ideal is alien to it, and all attempts by 
conservative, liberal or even revolutionary doctrinairism to subject it to its own 
tendencies will be futile ... it has its own ideal ... it will bring new principles into 

history, will create another civilisation, a new religion, a new right, a new life. 

“Faced with this great, serious, and even terrible figure of the people one dare 
not commit stupidities. Youth will abandon the ridiculous and disgusting role of 
impostrous schoolteachers... What could we teach the people? If one leaves aside 
the natural sciences and mathematics, the last word of our science will be the 
negation of the so-called immutable truths of the Western doctrine, the complete 
negation of the West.” 

Bakunin then descends on the authors of Young Russia accusing 
them of doctrinairism, of wanting to set themselves up as the 
people’s teachers, of having compromised the cause, of being 
children who do not understand anything and who have drawn 
their ideas from a few Western books which they have read.— The 
government, which at that time arrested these same young people 
as incendiaries, hurled the same reproaches at them. And so to 
reassure his tsar, Bakunin announces that 

“the people do not support this revolutionary party ... the vast majority of our 
youth belongs to the people’s party, to the party which has as its sole and single 
aim the triumph of the people’s cause. This party has no prejudices either for or 
against the tsar, and if the tsar, having begun the great work, had not betrayed the 
people, it would never have abandoned him, and even now it is not too late for 
him; and even now that youth would follow him with joy provided he would march 
at the head of his people. It would not allow itself to be stopped by any of the 
Western revolutionary prejudices. It is time for the Germans to go to Germany. If the 
tsar had realised that henceforth he must be the head not of an enforced 
centralisation, but of a free federation of free peoples, then, relying on a solid and 
regenerated force, allying himself with Poland and the Ukraine, breaking all the 
detested German alliances, and boldly raising the pan-Slav banner, he would 
become the saviour of the Slav world. 

“Yes, indeed, war on the Germans is a good and indispensable thing for the 
Slavs, at all events better than stifling the Poles to please the Germans. To rise and 
free the Slavs from the yoke of the Turks and the Germans will be a necessity and 
a sacred duty of the emancipated Russian people.” 

In the same pamphlet, he calls on the revolutionary party to 
rally under the banner of the people’s cause. Here are some 
articles of faith from the programme of this popular cause a la 
tsar: 

“Article 1. We” (Bakunin and Co.) “want popular SELF-GOVERNMENT in the 
commune, in the province,’ in the region and, finally, in the state, with or without the 
tsar—it doesn’t matter, according as the people wish.— Article 2. ...We are ready, and 
duty commands us, to come to the aid of Lithuania, Poland, and the Ukraine so as to 
prevent all violence, and to protect them against all their external enemies, especially 
the Germans.— Article 4. With Poland, Lithuania, and the Ukraine, we wish to lend a 
hand to all our Slav brothers now groaning under the yoke of the kingdom of Prussia 
and of the Austrian and Turkish empires, and we undertake not to sheathe the sword 
as long as a single Slav remains in German, Turkish, or any other slavery.” 

Article 6 prescribes an alliance with Italy, Hungary, Rumania 
and Greece. These were the very alliances then being sought by 
the Russian Government. 

“Article 7. We shall strive, with all the other Slav tribes, to make the cherished 
dream of the Slavs come true, to establish a great and free pan-Slav federation, [...] 
so that there shall be but a sole indivisible pan-Slav power. 

“This is the vast programme of the Slav cause, this is the last indispensable 
word of the Russian popular cause. To this cause we have devoted our whole life. 

“And now, where shall we go, and with whom shall we march? We have said 
where we want to go; we have also said with whom we shall march—with none 
other than the people. It remains to be known whom we shall follow. Shall we 

a “Volost”, “uyezd” in the Russian text.— Ed 

The Alliance and the I.W.M.A.—XI 567 

follow Romanov, Pugachev, or a new Pestel, if one can be found? * 

“Let us tell the truth. We would prefer to follow Romanov, if Romanov could, and 
would, transform himself from a Petersburg emperor into a peasant tsar. We 
would willingly rally under his banner, because the Russian people still recognises 
him, and because his power is already created, ready to act, and could become an 
invincible force if he gave it the popular baptism. We would follow him, moreover, 
because he alone can accomplish the great peaceful revolution without shedding a 
drop of Russian or Slav blood. Bloody revolutions sometimes become necessary 
owing to human stupidity; nevertheless they are a great evil and a great 
misfortune, not only as regards their victims, but as regards the purity and the 
fullness of the goal for which they are accomplished. We saw this during the 
French revolution. 

“Thus, our attitude to Romanov is clear. We are not his enemies, any more than 
we are his friends. We are the friends of the Russian popular cause, of the Slav 
cause. If the tsar is at the head of this cause, we shall follow him; but if he opposes 
it, we shall be his enemies. Therefore, the whole question is to know whether he 
wishes to be the Russian tsar, the peasant tsar, Romanov, or the Petersburg, the 
Holstein-Gottorp emperor. Does he wish to serve Russia, the Slavs, or the 
Germans? This question will soon be settled, and then we shall know what we must 
do.” 

Unfortunately, the tsar did not deem it appropriate to convoke 
the national assembly for which Bakunin, in this pamphlet, was 
already proposing his own candidature. He gained nothing out of 
his electoral manifesto and his genuflexions before Romanov. Humil- 
iatingly deceived in his frank confidence, he had no _alter- 
native but to throw himself headlong into pan-destructive anarchy. 

After this lucubration of a teacher who prostrated himself 
before his peasant tsar, his pupils and friends, Albert Richard and 
Gaspard Blanc, had every right to cry at the top of their voices: 
“Long live Napoleon III, emperor of the peasants!” 

XI 
DOCUMENTS 

1. THE SECRET STATUTES OF THE ALLIANCE 

The copy of these statutes which is now in our possession is 
partly written in Bakunin’s hand. He gave copies not only to his 
initiates, but to many more people whom he hoped to seduce with 
the disclosure of his splendid programme. The vanity of the 
author proved stronger than the sinister furtiveness of the 
mystifier. 

* Romanov is the tsar’s surname. Pugachev was the leader of a great Cossack 
uprising under Catherine II. Pestel was the leader of the 1825 conspiracy against 
Nicholas I. He was hanged. 

ORGANISATION OF THE ALLIANCE 
OF THE INTERNATIONAL BRETHREN* 

THREE GRADES: 

I. International brethren. 
II. National brethren. 
III. The half-secret, half-public organisation of the International Alliance of 
Socialist Democracy. 

I. RULES OF THE INTERNATIONAL BRETHREN 

1. The International Brethren have no homeland other than the world 
Revolution, no foreign land and no enemy other than the Reaction. 

2. They reject any policy of negotiation and concession, and regard as 
reactionary any political movement which does not have as its immediate and direct 
goal the triumph of their principles. 

3. They are Brethren—they never attack one another, nor settle their 
differences in public or in front of the courts. Their only justice is a jury of 
arbitrators, elected from among the brethren by the two parties. 

4. Each must be sacred to all the others, more sacred than a blood brother. 
Each brother shall be helped and protected by all the others to the limits of the 
possible. 

5. Only he may become an international brother who has sincerely accepted all 
the programme in all its consequences, theoretical and practical, and who adds 
revolutionary passion to intelligence, energy, honesty and discretion, he who has the 
devil in his flesh. We impose neither duty nor sacrifice. But he who has this passion 
will do many things without even imagining that he is making sacrifices. 

6. A brother must have neither business, interests, nor duties more serious and 
more sacred than the service of the revolution and of our secret Association, which 
must serve the revolution. 

7. A brother always has the right to refuse to render the services demanded of 
him by the Central Committee or by his National Committee, but many successive 
refusals will lead to his being considered unconscientious or lazy, and he may be 
suspended by his National Committee and, on the representation of this latter, 
temporarily expelled by the Central Committee pending a final decision by the 
Constituent Committee. 

8. No brother shall accept a public post except with the consent of the 
Committee to which he belongs~-None shall undertake public actions or 
appearances contrary or even foreign to the line of conduct determined by his 
Committee and without having consulted the latter. Every time that two or more 
brothers are together, they shall consult each other on all important public matters. 

9. All the International Brethren know one another. No political secret must ever 
exist among them. None may take part in any secret society whatever without the 
positive consent of his Committee and, if necessary, should the latter so demand, 
without that of the Central Committee.— And he may take part only on condition that 
he reveals to them all the secrets that could interest them directly or indirectly. 

a {M. A. Bakunin,] Organisation de l’Alliance des Fréres Internationaux, manu- 
script.— Ed. 

The Alliance and the I.W.M.A.—xXI ' 569 

10. The organisation of International Brethren is subdivided as follows: A. The 
General, or Constituent, Committee. B. The Central Committee. C. The National 
Committees. 

A. The General Committee 

This is an assembly of all or at least two-thirds of the International Brethren 
convoked regularly either at stipulated intervals, or in extraordinary assembly by a 
majority of the Central Committee. It is the supreme constituent and executive 
power of our entire organisation, whose programme, rules and organic statutes it can 
modify. 

B. The Central Committee 

Consists of: a) the Central Bureau, and b) the Central Supervisory Committee. The 
latter’s members are all the international brethren who, not belonging to the 
Bureau, are sufficiently near to be convoked at two days’ notice, and, naturally, 
all brethren who happen to be passing through. For the rest, they are guided 
in all their mutual relationships by the Rules of the Alliance of Socialist Democracy 
(see Articles 2-4).2 

C. The National Committees 

Each National Committee shall consist of all the international brethren 
(irrespective of nationality) who are in or near the centre of the national 
organisation. Each National Committee is subdivided equally into: a) a National 
Executive Bureau, and b) a National Supervisory Committee. This latter will include all 
international brethren present who are not in the Bureau. The same relationships 
as in the Alliance of Socialist Democracy. 

11. The admission of a new brother requires the unanimity of all members 
present (not less than three) of the National Committee and the confirmation by a 
two-thirds majority of the Central Committee. The Central Committee may admit a 
new member by the unanimous agreement of all its members. 

12. Each National Committee is to meet at least once a week to control and 
activate the organisational, propaganda and administrative work of its Bureau.— It 
is the natural judge of the conduct of each member in everything affecting his 
revolutionary dignity or relations with society. Its verdicts must be presented to the 
Central Committee for confirmation. It will direct the activities and all the public 
appearances of all members. Either through its Bureau or through a brother 
designated by it, it must maintain regular correspondence with the Central Bureau, 
to which it must write at least once every fortnight. 

13. The National Committee will organise a secret Association of the National 
Brethren in its country. 

II. THE NATIONAL BRETHREN 

14. The National Brethren must be organised in each country so that they can 
never deviate from the guidance of the general organisation of the International 
Brethren, and notably from that of the General Committee and of the Central 
Committee. Their programmes and their rules may only be finally put into opera- 
tion after they have received the sanction of the Central Committee. 

a See this volume, pp. 570-71.— Ed. 

15. Each National Committee may, if it finds it useful, establish among them 
two categories: a) that of National Brethren who know one another all over the 
country, and b) that of Brethren who do not know one another except in small 
groups.—In no case will the National Brethren even suspect the existence of an 
international organisation. 

16. The provincial centres, consisting entirely or partly of international brethren 
or national brethren of the first category, shall be established at all the principal 
points in the country, with the mission of promoting as thoroughly and as far as 
possible the secret organisation and the propaganda of its principles—not 
contenting themselves with acting in the cities, but also trying to propagate them in 
the villages and among the peasants. 

17. The National Committees shall attempt to raise the necessary financial 
means as soon as possible, not only for the success of their own organisation, but 
also for the general needs of the whole Association. They will therefore send a 
part—half?—to the Central Bureau. 

18. The National Bureaux must be very active, remembering that the 
principles, programmes and rules are of no worth unless the persons who have to 
put them into execution have the devil in their flesh. 

SECRET ORGANISATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE 
OF SOCIALIST DEMOCRACY 

1. The Permanent Central Committee of the Alliance consists of all the members 
of the Permanent National Committees and of those of the Geneva Central Section. 

When together, all these members constitute the Secret General Assembly of the 
Alliance, which is the constituent and supreme power of the Alliance and which 
will meet at least once a year at the Working Men’s Congress as delegates of the 
Alliance’s different national groups; it may also be convoked at any time equally by 
the Central Bureau or by the Geneva Central Section. 

2. The Geneva Central Section is the permanent delegation of the permanent 
Central Committee. It is composed of all the members of the Central Bureau and of 
all those of the Supervisory Committee, who must always be members of the 
permanent Central Committee.—The Central Section will be the Supreme Executive 
Council of the Alliance, within the limits of the Constitution and of the line of 
conduct which can only be laid down and modified by the General Assembly. It will 
decide on all questions of execution (not of constitution and general policy) by a 
simple majority of votes, and its resolutions thus adopted shall be binding on the 
Central Bureau, unless the Bureau, by a majority of its members, wishes to appeal to 
the General Assembly, which it must convoke in this case at three weeks’ notice.— To be 
regular, the General Assembly, when thus convoked, must be composed of two-thirds of 
all its members. 

3. The Central Bureau, the executive power, will consist of 3 to 5 or even 7 
members, who must always at the same time be members of the Permanent Central 
Committee Like one of the two parts which make up the Secret Central Section, the 
Central Bureau shall be a secret organisation. As such, it will receive its guidance 
from the Central Section and will pass on its communications, not to say its 
secret orders, to all the National Committees, from which it will receive secret 
reports at least once a month. As the Executive Directorate of the public Alliance, it 
shall be a public organisation. As such, it shall be on more or less private or public 
terms, according to country and circumstances, with all the National Bureaux, from 
which it shall also receive reports once a month. Its ostensible form of government 

The Alliance and the I.W.M.A.—XI 57] 

will be that of a presidency in a federative republic. The Central Bureau, as the 
secret as well as public executive power of the Alliance, shall activate the society’s 
secret and public propaganda and shall promote its development in all countries by 
all possible means. It shall administer the part of the finances which, in accordance 
with Article 6 of the public regulations,4 are sent to it from all countries for 
general needs. It shall publish a newspaper and pamphlets, and shall send 
travelling agents to form Alliance groups in the countries where there are none. In 
all the measures which it adopts for the good of the Alliance, it shall moreover 
submit to the decisions of the majority of the Secret Central Section, to which, 
incidentally, all its members shall belong. As an organisation both secret and public, 
and since it must be composed entirely of members of the Permanent Central 
Committee, the Central Bureau must always be a direct representation of this 
Committee The Provisional Central Bureau will now be presented to the Geneva 
initiating group as provisionally elected by all the founder members of the Alliance, 
of whom the majority, as former members of the Berne Congress, have returned 
to their countries after having delegating their powers to Citizen B.© This Bureau 
will function until the first public General Assembly which, in accordance with Ar- 
ticle 7 of the public Regulations,4 must meet as a branch of the International 
Working Men’s Association at the next Working Men’s Congress. It follows that 
members of the New Central Bureau must be nominated by this Assembly. But as 
it is urgent that the Central Bureau should always consist solely of members of the 
Permanent Central Committee, this latter, through the organ of its national committees, 
will take care to organise and direct all the local groups in such a way that they will 
delegate to this Assembly only members of the Permanent Central Committee, or, 
failing them, men absolutely devoted to the leadership of their respective national 
committees, so that the Permanent Central Committee should always have the upper 
hand in the entire organisation of the Alliance. 

4. The Supervisory Committee shall exercise control over all the actions of the 
Central Bureau.—It shall consist of all the members of the Permanent Central 
Committee resident either in the place itself, or near the residence of the Central 
Bureau, and also all the members temporarily present or just passing through, with 
the exception of the members who make up the Bureau. At the request of two 
members of the Supervisory Committee, all the members of the latter must at three 
days’ notice meet with the members of the Central Bureau to constitute the 
Assembly of the Central Section of ‘the Supreme Executive Council whose rights are 
defined in Article 2. 

5. The National Committees will be formed of all the members of the Permanent 
Central Committee who belong to the same nation.—As soon as there are three 
members of the Permanent Central Committee who belong to the same nation, 
they will be invited by the Bureau and, if necessary, by the Central Section, to form 
the National Committee of their country. Each National Committee may create a 
new member of the Central Committee of its country, but not otherwise than by 
the unanimous agreement of all the members. As soon as a new member has been 
appointed by a National Committee, the latter shall immediately inform the Central 
Bureau, which shall register this new member and shall thereby confer on him all 
the rights of a member of the Permanent Central Committee— The Geneva Central 
Section is likewise invested with the power to create new members by the 
unanimous agreement of all its members. 

a See this volume, p. 578.— Ed. 

b The League of Peace and Freedom.— Ed. 
¢ Mikhail Bakunin.— Ed. 

d See this volume, p. 578.— Ed. 

Each National Committee has, as its special mission, the foundation and 
organisation of the public as well as secret national group of the Alliance in its 
country. It shall be the group’s supreme chief and administrator through its 
National Bureau, which it shall have the task of creating and forming entirely of 
Permanent Central Committee members. The national committees shall have the 
same relationship, rights and powers with regard to their respective Bureaux as the 
central section with regard to the Central Bureau.—The national committees, which 
shall be formed by combining their respective bureaux and supervisory committees, 
shall recognise no authority other than the Central Bureau, and shall serve as the 
sole intermediaries between this latter and all the local groups of their country for 
propaganda and administration, and likewise for the collecting and paying in of 
subscriptions. The national committees, through their respective bureaux, shall have 
the task of organising the Alliance in their countries so that it shall always be 
dominated and represented at the Congresses by members of the Permanent Central 
Committee. 

As the national bureaux organise their local groups, they shall make it their 
concern to submit the regulations and programme to the central bureau for 
confirmation, without which the local groups cannot belong to the International 
Alliance of Socialist Democracy. 

PROGRAMME 
OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST ALLIANCE 

1. The International Alliance has been founded to promote the organisation 
and acceleration of the World Revolution on the basis of the principles proclaimed 
in our programme. 

2. In conformity with these principles, the goal of the revolution cannot be 
other than: a) The destruction of all ruling powers and all religious, monarchic, 
aristocratic and bourgeois authority in Europe. Consequently, the destruction of all 
existing states with all their political, juridical, bureaucratic and_ financial 
institutions. b) The reconstitution of a new society on the sole basis of freely 
associated labour, taking collective ownership, equality and justice as the starting 
point. 

3. The Revolution as we conceive it, or rather as the force of circumstances 
‘today inevitably presents it, is essentially international or universal in character. In 
view of the menacing coalition of all the privileged interests and all the reactionary 
powers in Europe, which have at their disposal all the formidable means given 
them by a cleverly organised organisation, and in view of the profound schism 
which reigns everywhere today between the bourgeoisie and the workers, no 
national revolution will succeed if it does not extend at once to all the other 
nations, and it will never cross the frontiers of a country and adopt this universal 
character unless it carries within itself all the elements of this universality—that is 
to say, unless it is an openly socialist revolution, destructive of the state, and 
creative of liberty through equality and justice; for nothing henceforth shall be able 
to reunite, electrify, and arouse the great and only true power of the century—the 
workers—except the total emancipation of labour on the ruins of all the 
institutions which protect hereditary landownership and capital. 

4. Since the impending Revolution can only be universal, the Alliance, or, not 
to mince words, the conspiracy which must prepare, organise and accelerate it, 
must also be universal. 

The Alliance and the I.W.M.A.—XI 573 

5. The Alliance will pursue a double aim: a) It will endeavour to disseminate 
among the masses of all countries the right ideas on politics, social economy, and 
all philosophical questions. It will carry out active propaganda by means of 
newspapers, pamphlets and books, and also by founding public associations. 6) It 
will seek to affiliate to itself all intelligent, energetic, discreet and well-disposed men 
who are sincerely devoted to our ideas, in order to form all over Europe, and as 
far as possible in America, an invisible network of dedicated revolutionaries who 
have become more powerful through this very Alliance. 

PROGRAMME AND OBJECTIVES 
OF THE REVOLUTIONARY ORGANISATION 
OF THE INTERNATIONAL BRETHREN 

1. The principles of this organisation are the same as those of the programme 
of the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy. They are even more explicitly 
defined, as regards women, the family from the point of view of religion and law, 
and the state, in the programme of the Russian Socialist Democracy. 

The Central Bureau moreover reserves the right to present shortly a more 
comprehensive theoretical and practical exposition of these principles. 

2. The association of international brethren aims for a universal revolution, 
simultaneously social, philosophical, economic and political, so that of the present 
order of things—based on private property, exploitation, domination and the 
principle of authority, whether religious, metaphysical, bourgeois-doctrinaire, or even 
Jacobin-revolutionary — not a stone shall remain standing, first in all Europe and then 
throughout the rest of the world. With the cry of peace for the workers, liberty for all 
the oppressed, and death to the rulers, exploiters and guardians of all kinds, we seek 
to destroy all states and all churches along with all their institutions and laws, religious, 
political, juridical, financial, police, university, economic and social, so that all these 
millions of poor human beings, deceived, enslaved, tormented and exploited, 
delivered from all their directors and benefactors, official and officious, collective and 
individual, may breathe at last with complete freedom. 

3. Convinced that individual and social evil resides far less in individuals than 
in the organisation of things and in social position, we shall be humane as much 
' from a sense of justice as from considerations of utility, and we shall destroy 
positions and things without pity in order to be able to spare human beings without 
any danger to the Revolution. We deny to society free will and the supposed right 
to punish. Justice itself, taken in the most humane and broadest sense, is but a 
negative and transitional idea, as it were. It poses social problems, but it does not 
think them over, merely indicating the only possible way to human liberation, 
namely, the humanisation of society through liberty in equality; the positive 
solution can only be given through the increasingly rational organisation of society. 
This solution, which is so desirable and is the ideal that we all have in common ... is 
the liberty, morality, intelligence and well-being of each through the solidarity of 
all—human fraternity. 

Every human individual is the involuntary product of the natural and social 
environment in which he is born and develops, and which continues to exert an 
influence upon him. The three great causes of all human immorality are: 
inequality, political, economic and social; the ignorance which is its natural result; 
and their inevitable consequence— slavery. 

Since the organisation of society is always and everywhere the sole cause of the 
crimes committed by men, it is hypocritical or obviously absurd on society’s part to 
punish criminals, when all punishment presumes culpability and the criminals are 

never culpable. The theory of culpability and punishment is a theological issue, that 
is to say, it is a combination of religious hypocrisy and the absurd. 

The only right which can be allowed to society in its present state of transition 
is the natural right to assassinate the criminals, which it has itself produced, in the 
interests of its own protection, and not the right to judge and condemn them. This 
right will not even be one in the strictly accepted sense of the word; it will be 
rather a natural fact, distressing but unavoidable, a sign and product of the 
impotence and stupidity of the existing society; and the more society is able to 
avoid using it, the nearer it will be to its own actual liberation. All revolutionaries, 
all oppressed, all suffering victims of the existing organisation of society, whose 
hearts are naturally full of vengeance and hatred, would do well to remember that 
the kings, oppressors and exploiters of all kinds are as much to blame as the 
criminals who have emerged from the masses: they are malefactors, but they are 
not to blame, since they too are, like ordinary criminals, the involuntary products 
of the existing order of society. One should not be surprised if, at the first 
moment, the insurgent people kill a great many of them—this will be an inevitable 
calamity, perhaps, as futile as the damage caused by a tempest. 

But this natural fact will be neither moral nor even useful. In this respect, 
history is full of lessons: the terrible guillotine of 1793, which could not be accused 
of idleness or tardiness, did not succeed in destroying the nobility in France. The 
aristocracy there was, if not completely destroyed, at least profoundly shaken, not 
by the guillotine, but by the confiscation and sale of its estates. And, in general, it 
may be said that political massacres have never killed parties; they have shown 
themselves above all impotent against the privileged classes, since power is rooted 
much less in men than in the positions which are given to the privileged by the 
organisation of things, that is to say, by the institution of the state and by its 
consequence and also by its natural basis, private property. 

To carry out a radical revolution, one must therefore attack positions and 
things, one must destroy property and the state; then there will be no need to 
destroy men and to condemn oneself to the unfailing and inevitable reaction which 
has never failed and never will fail to produce the massacre of human beings in 
any society. 

But in order to have the right to be humane to human beings without 
endangering the revolution, one must be ruthless with positions and things; it will 
be necessary to destroy everything, and, above all and before everything else, 
property and its inevitable corollary—the State. This is the whole secret of the 
revolution. 

One should not be surprised at the Jacobins and the Blanquists who became 
socialists by necessity rather than by conviction, and for whom socialism is a means, 
not an end of the Revolution, since they want the dictatorship, that is to say, the 
centralisation of the state, and the state will lead them by a logical and inevitable 
necessity to the reconstitution of property—it is quite natural, we say, that, not 
wishing to carry out a radical revolution against things, they dream of a bloody 
revolution against men.— But this bloody revolution, founded on the construction 
of a powerfully centralised revolutionary state, would inevitably result, as we shall 
prove more fully later, in a military dictatorship under a new master. Consequent- 
ly, the triumph of the Jacobins or the Blanquists would mean the death of the 
Revolution. 

4. We are the natural enemies of those revolutionaries—future dictators, 
regulators and tutors of the revolution—who, even before the existing monarchic, 
aristocratic and bourgeois states have been destroyed, already dream of creating 
new revolutionary states as centralised as, and even more despotic than the 
existing states, and who have acquired so great a habit of order created from above 

The Alliance and the I.W.M.A.—XI 575 

and so great a horror of what seems to them like disorder, but is nothing other 
than the frank and natural expression of the people’s life, that even before a good 
and salutary disorder has been produced by the revolution, they already dream of 
putting an end to it and of muzzling it by the force of an authority which will have 
nothing of revolution but the name, but which will, in effect, be no more than a 
new reaction, since it will really be a new condemnation of the masses, governed by 
decrees, to obedience, stagnation and death, that is, to slavery and exploitation by a 
new quasi-revolutionary aristocracy. 

5. We understand revolution to mean the unleashing of what today are called 
the evil passions and the destruction of what, in the same language, is called 
“public order”. 

We do not fear anarchy, and we invoke it, convinced that from this anarchy, 
that is to say, from the complete manifestation of the people’s life unleashed, there 
must emerge liberty, equality, justice, a new order, and the very force of 
Revolution against Reaction. This new life—the people’s revolution—will doubtless 
not delay in organising itself, but will create its revolutionary organisation from 
bottom to top and from the circumference to the centre—in conformity with the 
principle of liberty, and not from top to bottom, nor from the centre to the 
circumference after the manner of all authority—for it matters little to us that this 
authority calls itself Church, Monarchy, constitutional State, bourgeois Republic, or 
even revolutionary dictatorship. We detest them and we reject them all alike as 
infallible sources of exploitation and despotism. 

6. The revolution, as we understand it, must from the very first day destroy, 
radically and totally, the state and all the state’s institutions. The natural and 
necessary consequences of this destruction will be: a) the bankruptcy of the state; 
b) an end to the payment of private debts by the intervention of the state, leaving 
each debtor the right to pay if he wants; c) an end to the payment of all taxes and 
to the deduction of all contributions, direct or indirect; d) the dissolution of the 
army, the magistrature, the bureaucracy, the police and the clergy; e) the abolition 
of official justice, the withdrawal of everything which juridically called itself law, 
together with the exercise of those laws. Consequently, the abolition and auto-da-fé 
of all title-deeds, deeds of inheritance, purchase, gift, and all trials—in a word, of 
all juridical and civil red tape. Everywhere and in everything, revolutionary acts 
instead of the law created and guaranteed by the state; f) the confiscation of all 
productive capital and instruments of labour for the benefit of working men’s 
associations, which should collectively use them for production; g) the confiscation 
of all church and state property, and likewise of individually owned precious metals 
for the benefit of the Federative Alliance of all the working men’s associations, that 
is, the Alliance which will form the Commune. 

In return for the confiscated goods, the Commune will give what is strictly 
necessary to all individuals thus deprived, who may later gain more by their own 
work if they are able and willing.—h) For the organisation of the Commune—a 
federation of permanently acting barricades and the functioning of a Council of 
the Revolutionary Commune by the delegation of one or two deputies from each 
barricade and one per street, or per block, these deputies being invested with 
imperative mandates and always responsible and revocable at any time. The 
Commune Council, thus organised, will be able to elect from its membership special 
executive committees for each branch of the revolutionary administration of the 
Commune. 1) A declaration by the insurgent capital, once organised as a commune, 
that, having destroyed the authoritarian and tutelary state, which it was entitled to 
do since it had been the state’s slave like all the other localities, it renounces its 
right, or rather all claims, to direct or dictate to the provinces. k) An appeal to all 
provinces, communes, and associations, while allowing them all to follow the 

example set by the capital, first to reorganise themselves in a revolutionary way, and 
then to delegate to an agreed place of assembly their deputies, all likewise 
empowered with imperative mandates and responsible and revocable, to constitute 
a federation of associations, communes and provinces which have risen in the name 
of the same principles, and to organise a revolutionary force capable of triumphing 
over the reaction. The sending, not of official revolutionary commissars with 
shoulder sashes, but of revolutionary propagandists into al] the provinces and 
communes—above all among the peasants, who can be turned into revolutionaries 
neither by principles nor by the decrees of some dictatorship, but only by 
revolutionary action itself, that is to say, by the consequences which will infallibly be 
produced in all the communes by the complete cessation of the official juridical life 
of the state. Abolition of the national state also in the sense that any foreign 
country, province, commune, association, or even isolated individual that rises in 
the name of the same principles, shall be received into the revolutionary federation 
without regard for existing state frontiers, although they belong to different 
political or national systems; and in the sense that any of one’s own provinces, 
communes, associations and individuals that side with the Reaction, shall be 
excluded from it. It is, then, by the very fact of the spreading and organisation of 
the revolution with a view to the mutual defence of the insurgent countries, that 
the universality of the revolution shall triumph, based on the abolition of frontiers 
and on the destruction of the states. 

7. There can be no victorious political or national revolution henceforth unless 
the political revolution becomes a social revolution, and unless the national 
revolution, precisely because of its character, radically socialist and destructive of 
the state, becomes the universal revolution. 

8. Since the revolution must be carried out everywhere by the people, and since 
the supreme direction of it must always remain with the people organised into a 
free federation of agricultural and industrial associations, the new and revolution- 
ary state, organising itself from bottom to top by way of revolutionary delegation, 
and embracing all the countries that have risen in the name of the same principles 
without regard for the old frontiers and for differences in nationality, will have as 
its goal the administration of the public services and not the government of the 
peoples. It will constitute the new homeland, the Alliance of the Universal Revolution 
against the Alliance of aj] the reactionary forces. 

9. This organisation excludes any idea of dictatorship and of tutelary ruling 
power. But for the very establishment of this revolutionary alliance and for the 
triumph of the revolution against the reaction, it is necessary that in the midst of 
popular anarchy which will constitute the very life and energy of the revolution, 
unity of revolutionary idea and action should find an organ. This organ must be the secret 
and world Association of the international brethren. 

10. This association proceeds from the conviction that revolutions are never 
made either by individuals, or even by secret societies. They come about, as it were, of 
their own accord, produced by the force of things, by the course of events and facts. 
They are prepared over a long time deep in the instinctive consciousness of the 
popular masses, and then they flare up, often induced, apparently, by insignificant 
causes. All that a well-organised secret society can do is, first, to assist in the birth of 
the revolution by spreading among the masses ideas corresponding to their instincts, 
and to organise, not the army of the revolution—the army must always be the 
people—but a sort of revolutionary general staff composed of devoted, energetic, 
intelligent and above all sincere friends of the people, who are not ambitious or vain, 
and who are capable of serving as intermediaries pewern the revolutionary idea and 
the popular instincts. 

11. The number of these individuals should not, therefore, be too large. For the 

The Alliance and the I.W.M.A.—XI 577 

international organisation in the whole of Europe, a hundred firmly and seriously 
united revolutionaries would be sufficient. Two or three hundred revolutionaries 
would be enough for the organisation of the biggest country. 

2. PROGRAMME AND REGULATIONS OF THE PUBLIC ALLIANCE@ 

The socialist minority of the League of Peace and Freedom having broken away from 
this league owing to the majority vote at the Berne Congress, which made a formal 
declaration opposing the fundamental principle of all the working men’s 
associations, namely, the economic and social equality of classes and individuals, has 
thereby adhered to the principles proclaimed by the Working Men's Congresses held 
at Geneva, Lausanne and Brussels. Several members of this minority, who belong 
to different nations, have suggested to us that we organise a new International 
Alliance of Socialist Democracy wholly merged with the great International Working 
Men’s Association, but adopting as its special mission the study of political and 
philosophical questions on the same basis of this great principle of the universal 
and real equality of all human beings on earth. 

Convinced, for our part, of the usefulness of such an enterprise, which will give 
the sincere socialist democrats of Europe and America a means of understanding one 
another and of affirming their ideas without any pressure from the false socialism 
which bourgeois democracy now finds it useful to flaunt, we have thought it our 
duty to take the joint initiative with these friends in forming this new organisation. 

Consequently, we have set ourselves up as the central section of the International 
Alliance of Socialist Democracy, and we are today publishing its Programme and 
Regulations. 

PROGRAMME 
OF THE INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE 
OF SOCIALIST DEMOCRACY 

1) The Alliance declares itself to be atheist; it strives for the abolition of cults, 
the substitution of science for faith and of human justice for divine justice. 

2) It seeks, above all, the political, economic and social equalisation of classes and of 
individuals of both sexes, commencing with the abolition of the right of inheritance, so 
that in future the enjoyment of the benefits should be equal to the production of 
each, and so that, in conformity with the decision taken by the last Congress of 
workers at Brussels, the land and instruments of labour, like all other capital, by 
becoming the collective property of society as a whole, may not be used except by 
the workers, that is to say, by agricultural and industrial associations. 

3) It requires all children of both sexes, from the day of their birth, to have 
equality of the means of development, that is to say, maintenance, education and 
training at all levels in science, industry and the arts, being convinced that this 
equality, at first purely economic and social, will eventually lead to the increasing 
natural equality of individuals by eliminating all the artificial inequalities which are 
historical products of social organisation as false as it is iniquitous. 

a (M. Bakounine,] Programme et réglement de l’Alliance Internationale de la 
Démocratie Socialiste, Geneva, 1868.— Ed. 

4) As the enemy of all despotism, recognising no political form other than the 
republican, and rejecting outright all reactionary alliance, the Alliance also rejects all 
political action which does not have for its immediate and direct goal the triumph 
of the cause of the workers against Capital. 

5) It recognises that all the political and authoritarian states now existing, as 
they are reduced more and more to the simple administrative functions of the public 
services in their respective countries, must disappear in the universal union of free 
Associations, agricultural and industrial alike. 

6) Since the social question cannot find a definitive and practicable solution 
except on the basis of the international or universal solidarity of the workers of all 
countries, the Alliance rejects any policy founded on so-called patriotism and the 
rivalry of nations. 

7) It wants the universal Association of all the local Associations through 
liberty.