2. BAKUNIN’S PAN-SLAV MANIFESTO

On March 3, 1861, Alexander II proclaimed, to the tumultuous plaudits of all liberal Europe, the emancipation of the serfs. The efforts of Chernyshevsky and the revolutionary party to obtain the preservation of communal landownership had produced results, but in a manner so unsatisfactory that, even before the proclamation of the manifesto emancipating the serfs,**? Chernyshevsky sadly admitted: “Had I known that the question raised-by me was to receive such a solution, I would have preferred to suffer a defeat rather than win such a victory. I would rather they had acted as they had intended, without any regard for our claims.”

And, indeed, the act of emancipation was nothing but a swindle. A large part of the land was taken away from its real owners, and a system was proclaimed whereby the peasants could buy back their land. This act of bad faith by the tsar gave Chernyshevsky and his party a new and irresistible argument against imperial reforms. The liberals, ranging themselves under Herzen’s banner, bayed at the top of their voices: “Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!’’* By Galilean, they meant Alexander II.—From that moment, the liberal party, whose chief organ was Herzen’s Kolokol, never ceased to sing the praises of the tsar-liberator and, to distract the public’s attention from the complaints and claims which were stirred up by this anti-popular act, they asked the tsar to continue his emancipatory work and to launch a crusade for the liberation of the oppressed Slav peoples and for the achievement of pan-Slavism.

In the summer of 1861, Chernyshevsky, in the journal Sovremennik, denounced the manoeuvres of the pan-Slavists and told the Slav peoples the truth about the state of affairs in Russia and about the selfish obscurantism of their false friends, the pan-Slavists.” It was then that Bakunin, on his return from Siberia, judged that the moment had arrived for him to step forward. He wrote the first part of a long manifesto published as a supplement by Kolokol on February 15, 1862, and entitled: To the Russian, Polish and All Slav Friends.“ The second part never appeared.

The manifesto begins with the following declaration: “T have retained the audacity of all-conquering thought, and in heart, will and passion I have remained true to my friends, to the great common cause, to myself... I now appear before you, my old and tested friends, and you, my young friends, who live by one thought and one will with us, and I ask you: admit me to your midst again and may I be permitted, with you and in your midst, to devote all my remaining life to the struggle for Russian freedom, for Polish freedom, for the freedom and independence of all Slavs.”

If Bakunin addresses this humble prayer to his old and young friends, it is because “it is bad to be active in a foreign land. I experienced this in the revolutionary years: neither in France nor in Germany was I able to gain a foothold. And so, while preserving all my ardent sympathy of former years for the progressive movement of the whole world, in order not to waste the rest of my life I must henceforth limit my direct activity to Russia, Poland, and the Slavs. These three separate worlds are inseparable in my love and in my faith.”

In 1862, eleven years ago, at the age of forty-seven,‘ the great ¢ M. A. BakyHuyn, «PyccKHMb, TIOABCKHMb H BCbMb CAaBAHCKHMb APy3bAMb>, Konoxont, No. 122/123, February 15, 1862, supplement.— Ed.

and Frederick Engels anarchist Bakunin preached the cult of the state and pan-Slav patriotism.

“It might be said that the Great-Russian people has hitherto lived only the external life of the state. However burdensome its position may have been within, reduced to extreme ruin and slavery, it has nevertheless cherished the unity, strength and greatness of Russia, and has been ready to make any sacrifice for their sake. And so there has been a growing awareness among the Great-Russian people of the state and patriotism, not in words, but in deeds. And so it alone has survived as a people among the Slav tribes; it alone has held out in Europe and made itself felt by all as a force... Do not fear that it may lose its legitimate influence and the political force which it has acquired solely by struggles lasting three centuries and accomplished by martyr-like abnegation to safeguard its state integrity... Let us send the Tartars to Asia, the Germans to Germany, and let us be a free people, a purely Russian people...’ To lend more authority to this pan-Slav propaganda, which ends by calling for a crusade against the Tartars and the Germans, Bakunin refers the reader to the Emperor Nicholas: “They say that Emperor Nicholas himself, not long before his death, when preparing to declare war on Austria, wanted to call all the Austrian and Turkish Slavs, Magyars and Italians to a general uprising. He had stirred up against himself an eastern storm and, to defend himself against it, he wanted to transform himself from a despotic emperor into a revolutionary emperor. They say that his proclamations to the Slavs as also an appeal to the Poles had already been signed by him. However much he hated Poland, he understood that, without it, a Slav uprising was impossible... he overcame his aversion to such an extent that he was ready, it is said, to recognise the independent existence of Poland, but... only beyond the Vistula.”

The very man who, since 1868, has played the internationalist, preached, in 1862, a war of the races in the interests of the Russian Government. Pan-Slavism is an invention of the St. Petersburg cabinet and has no other goal but to extend Russia’s European frontiers further west and south. But since one dare not announce to the Austrian, Prussian and Turkish Slavs that their destiny is to be absorbed into the great Russian Empire, one represents Russia to them as the power which will deliver them from the foreign yoke and which will reunite them in a great free federation. Thus, pan-Slavism is open to various shades of interpretation, from the pan-Slavism of Nicholas to that of Bakunin; but they all tend to the same end and all are, at bottom, in an entente cordiale, as is proved by the passage which we have just quoted. The manifesto* to which we now turn will leave us in no doubt on this score.

aM. A. BakyHuub, Hapodnoe Atro. Pomanoss, [Tyzauess, uau Tecmenv? London, 1862.— Ed.

3. BAKUNIN AND THE TSAR

We have seen that, consequent upon the emancipation of the serfs, war broke out between the liberal and the revolutionary parties in Russia. Round Chernyshevsky, leader of the revolutionary party, there gathered a whole phalanx of journalists, a large group of officers, and the student youth. The liberal party was represented by Herzen, a few pan-Slavists, and a large number of peaceful reformers and admirers of Alexander II. The government lent its support to the liberals. In March 1861, the university students in Russia declared themselves vigorously in favour of the affranchisement of Poland. In the autumn of 1861, they tried to resist the “coup d’état” which wanted, by disciplinary and fiscal measures, to deprive the poor students (over two-thirds of the total number) of the chance to receive a higher education. The government declared this protest to be a riot, and in Petersburg, Moscow and Kazan, hundreds of young people were thrown into gaols, expelled from the universities, or banned from them after three months’ detention. And for fear that these young people might aggravate the discontent of the peasants, a decree of the State Council forbade ex-students all access to public functions in the villages. But the persecutions did not stop there. Professors such as Pavlov were exiled; public courses organised by students who had been expelled from the universities, were shut down; fresh police hunts were undertaken on the most futile pretexts; the “student youth fund”, only just authorised, was abruptly suppressed; newspapers were banned. All this brought the indignation and agitation of the radical party to a head and compelled it to resort to the underground press. At this point, a manifesto entitled Young Russia was published with an epigraph by Robert Owen.**? This manifesto exposed clearly and in detail the internal situation of the country, the state of the various parties and of the press, and, in proclaiming communism, deduced the necessity for a social revolution. It called on all serious people to group round the radical banner.

Hardly had this manifesto issued from the underground press, when, by a fatal coincidence (unless the police had a hand in it), numerous fires broke out in St. Petersburg. The government and the reactionary press joyously seized on the occasion to accuse the young people and all the radical party of incendiarism. The prison cells filled up again, and the roads to exile were once more thronged with victims. Chernyshevsky was arrested and thrown into the St. Petersburg fortress, from where, after two and Frederick Engels long years of intense suffering, he was sent to forced labour in Siberia.

Before this catastrophe, Herzen and Gromeka, who later contributed to the pacification of Poland as governor of one of its provinces, delivered a series of furious attacks, the former in London, the latter in Russia, on the radical party, and insinuated that Chernyshevsky would perhaps end up by receiving a decoration.*— In as moderate an article as possible, Chernyshevsky called on Herzen to consider carefully the consequences of the new role which the Kolokol was going to play in open hostility to the Russian revolutionary party.” Herzen pompously declared that he was ready to pronounce, in the presence of those he called international democrats—Mazzini, Victor Hugo, Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc, etc.—the famous toast to the health of the great tsar-liberator‘ and, “whatever is said”, he added, “by the revolutionary Daniels of Petersburg, I know that despite all their protests, this toast will find a favourable echo in the Winter Palace” (the tsar’s residence).“ The revolutionary Daniels were Chernyshevsky and his friends.**° Bakunin got the better of Herzen. It was when the revolutionary party was completely routed and Chernyshevsky was in prison, that Bakunin published, at the age of fifty-one,° his notorious pamphlet to the peasant tsar: Romanov, Pugachev or Pestel. The People’s Cause. By Mikhail Bakunin, 1862.

“Many are still wondering whether there will be a revolution in Russia. It is taking place gradually, it reigns everywhere, in everything, in all minds. It acts still more successfully through the hands of the government than through the efforts of its own adherents. It will not abate and will not cease until it has regenerated the Russian world, until it has created a new Slav world.

“The dynasty is working to bring about its own destruction. It seeks its salvation in wishing to stop the life of the people which is awakening instead of protecting it. This life, if it were understood, could have raised the imperial house to hitherto unknown heights of power and glory... It is a pity! Rarely has it fallen to the lot of the tsar’s house to play so majestic and so beneficent a role. Alexander II could so b [H. [. Gepxpunesckuii,] «<Tloautuxa. Tloxsaaa Mupy.— Cpaxenia npu Maz- *eHTb nu Coapnhepuuo.— II puunusr caaboctw apctpilickow apmin. IIpwunna, no KOTOpOH ObIAb 3aKAIOYEHb MUpb», Coepemennuxs, No. 7, July 1859.— Ed.

¢ [A. MH. Tepuex,] «10 anpbaa 1861 nu y6itictBa Bb Bapuiasb», Koroxons, No. 96, April 15, 1861— Ed.

€ Bakunin’s age is given here according to Utin’s report; in fact, Bakunin was born on May 30, 1814.— Ed.

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 disturbances, 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.

and Frederick Engels 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.

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

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 and Frederick Engels “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 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. Humiliatingly deceived in his frank confidence, he had no _alternative 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!”

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.

and Frederick Engels 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, manuscript.— Ed.

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 operation after they have received the sanction of the Central Committee.

and Frederick Engels 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 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 Article 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.

and Frederick Engels 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.

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 and Frederick Engels 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. Consequently, 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 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 and Frederick Engels 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 revolutionary 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 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.

and Frederick Engels 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.

REGULATIONS

1) The International Alliance of Socialist Democracy is constituted as a branch of the International Working Men’s Association, all of whose General Rules it accepts.

2) The founder-members of the Alliance provisionally organise a Central Bureau at Geneva.

3) The founder-members belonging to the same country constitute the National Bureau of that country.

4) The National Bureaux have the mission of establishing, in all localities, local groups of the Alliance of Socialist Democracy which, through the intermediary of their respective National Bureaux, will apply to the Central Bureau of the Alliance for admission to the International Working Men’s Association.

5) All the local groups will form their bureaux in accordance with the custom adopted by the local sections of the International Working Men’s Association.

6) All members of the Alliance undertake to pay a subscription of ten centimes per month, of which half shall be retained for its own needs by each national group, and the other half shall be remitted to the funds of the Central Bureau for its general needs.

In countries where this sum is considered too high, the National Bureaux, in agreement with the Central Bureau, may reduce it.

7) During the annual Congress of Workers, the Delegation of the Alliance of Socialist Democracy, as a branch of the International Working Men’s Association, shall hold its public sessions in a separate place.