The report just published by the Hague Commission on Mikhail 
Bakunin’s secret Alliance * has revealed to the working world the 
underhand activities, the dirty tricks and phrase-mongery by 
which the proletarian movement was to be placed at the service of 
the inflated ambition and selfish ends of a few misunderstood 
geniuses. Meanwhile these would-be-great men have given us the 
opportunity in Spain to see something of their practical revolutio- 
nary activity. Let us see how they put into practice their 
ultra-revolutionary phrases about anarchy and autonomy, about 
the abolition of all authority, especially that of the state, and the 
immediate and complete emancipation of the workers. We are at 
last able to do this, since, apart from the newspaper reports about 
the events in Spain, we now have the report of the New Madrid 
Federation of the International* presented to the Geneva Con- 
gress.””° 

As we know, at the time the split in the International occurred 
the odds were in favour of the members of the secret Alliance in 
Spain; the great majority of Spanish workers followed their lead. 
When the Republic was proclaimed in February 1873, the Spanish 
members of the Alliance found themselves in a quandary. Spain is 
such a backward country industrially that there can be no question 

* [’Alliance de la Démocratie socialiste, London, 1873. The German edition was 
published under the title: Ein Komplott gegen die Internationale (Bookshop of the 
Vorwarts).392 

4 La Nueva Federacién Madrilena a los delegados al sexto Congreso general. Madrid 
24 de agosto de 1873.— Ed. 

there of immediate complete emancipation of the working class. 
Spain will first have to pass through various preliminary stages of 
development and remove quite a number of obstacles from its 
path. The Republic offered a chance of going through these stages 
in the shortest possible time and quickly surmounting the 
obstacles. But this chance could be taken only if the Spanish 
working class played an active political role. The labour masses felt 
this; they strove everywhere to participate in events, to take 
advantage of the opportunity for action, instead of leaving the 
propertied classes, as hitherto, a clear field for action and 
intrigues. The government announced that elections were to be 
held to the Constituent Cortes.* What was the attitude of the 
International to be? The leaders of the Bakuninists were in a 
predicament. Continued political inaction became more ridiculous 
and impossible with every passing day; the workers wanted “to see 
things done”.” The members of the Alliance on the other hand 
had been preaching for years that no part should be taken in a 
revolution that did not have as its aim the immediate and 
complete emancipation of the working class, that political action of 
any kind implied recognition of the State, which was the root of all 
evil, and that therefore participation in any form of elections was a 
crime worthy of death. How they got out of this fix is recounted 
in the already mentioned Madrid report: 

“The same people who rejected the Hague resolution on the political attitude of 
the working class and who trampled under foot the Rules of the [International 
Working Men’s] Association, thus bringing division, conflict and confusion into the 
Spanish Section of the International; the same people who had the effrontery to 
depict us to the workers as ambitious place-hunters, who, under the pretext of 
establishing the rule of the working class, sought to establish their own rule; the 
same people who call themselves autonomists, anarchist revolutionaries, etc., have 
on this occasion flung themselves into politics, bourgeois politics of the worst kind. 
They have worked, not to give political power to the working class—on the 
contrary this idea is repugnant to them—but to help to power a bourgeois faction 
of adventurers, ambitious men and place-hunters who call themselves Intransigent 
(irreconcilable) Republicans. 

. “Already on the eve of the general election to the Constituent Cortes the 
workers of Barcelona, Alcoy and other towns wanted to know what political line 
they should adopt in the parliamentary struggle and other campaigns. Two big 
meetings were therefore held, one in Barcelona, the other in Alcoy; at both 
meetings the Alliance members went out of their way to prevent any decision being 
reached as to what political line was to be taken by the International” (nota bene: 
by their own International). “It was therefore decided that the International, as an 
association, should not engage in any political activity whatever, but that its members, as 

4 On May 10, 1873.— Ed. 
b J. W. Goethe, Zueignung.— Ed. 

The Bakuninists at Work.—I 583 

individuals, could act on their own as they thought fit and join the party they chose, in 
accordance with their famous doctrine of autonomy! And what was the result of 
the application of this absurd doctrine? That most of the members of the 
International, including the anarchists, took part in the elections with no 
programme, no banner, and no candidates, thereby helping to bring about the 
election of almost exclusively bourgeois republicans. Only two or three workers got 
into the Chamber, and they represent absolutely nothing, their voice has not once 
been raised in defence of the interests of our class, and they cheerfully voted for all 
the reactionary motions tabled by the majority.” 

That is what Bakuninist “abstention from politics” leads to. At 
quiet times, when the proletariat knows beforehand that at best it 
can get only a few representatives to parliament and have no 
chance whatever of winning a parliamentary majority, the workers 
may sometimes be made to believe that it is a great revolutionary 
action to sit out the elections at home, and in general, not to attack 
the State in which they live and which oppresses them, but to 
attack the State as such which exists nowhere and which 
accordingly cannot defend itself. This is a splendid way of 
behaving in a revolutionary manner, especially for people who lose 
heart easily; and the extent to which the leaders of the Spanish 
Alliance belong to this category of people is shown in some detail 
in the aforementioned publication.* 

As soon as events push the proletariat into the fore, however, 
abstention becomes a palpable absurdity and the active interven- 
tion of the working class an inevitable necessity. And this is what 
happened in Spain. The abdication of Amadeo ousted the radical 
monarchists°*”* from power and deprived them of the possibility of 
recovering it in the near future; the Alfonsists*”’ stood still less 
chance at the time; as for the Carlists, they, as usual, preferred 
civil war to an election campaign.*” All these parties, according to the 
Spanish custom, abstained. Only the federalist Republicans, split 
into two wings, and the bulk of the workers took part in the 
elections. Given the enormous attraction which the name of the 
International still enjoyed at that time among the Spanish workers 
and given the excellent organisation of the Spanish Section which, 
at least for practical purposes, still existed at the time, it was 
certain that any candidate nominated and supported by the 
International would be brilliantly successful in the industrial 
districts of Catalonia, in Valencia, in the Andalusian towns and so 
on, and that a minority would be elected to the Cortes large 
enough to decide the issue whenever it came to a vote between the 
two wings of the Republicans. The workers were aware of this; 

a See this volume, pp. 486-97.— Ed. 

they felt that the time had come to bring their still powerful 
organisation into play. But the honourable leaders of the 
Bakuninist school had been preaching the gospel of unqualified 
abstention too long to be able suddenly to reverse their line; and 
so they invented that deplorable way out—that of having the 
International abstain as a body, but allowing its members as 
individuals to vote as they liked. The result of this declaration of 
political bankruptcy was that the workers, as always in such cases, 
voted for those who made the most radical speeches, that is, for 
the Intransigents, and considering themselves therefore more or 
less responsible for subsequent steps taken by their deputies, 
became involved in them. 

I] 

The members of the Alliance could not possibly persist in the 
ridiculous position into which their cunning electoral policy had 
landed them; it would have meant the end of their control over 
the International in Spain. They had to act, if only for the sake of 
appearances. Salvation for them lay in a general strike. 

In the Bakuninist programme a general strike is the lever 
employed by which the social revolution is started. One fine 
morning all the workers in all the industries of a country, or even 
of the whole world, stop work, thus forcing the propertied classes 
either humbly to submit within four weeks at the most, or to 
attack the workers, who would then have the right to defend 
themselves and use this opportunity to pull down the entire old 
society. The idea is far from new; this horse was since 1848 hard 
ridden by French, and later Belgian socialists; it is originally, 
however, an English breed. During the rapid and vigorous growth 
of Chartism among the English workers following the crisis of 
1837, the “holy month”, a strike on a national scale was advocated 
as early as 1839 (see Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in 
England, Second Edition [1892], p. 234°) and this had such a 
strong appeal that in July 1842 the industrial workers in northern 
England tried to put it into practice—Great importance was also 
attached to the general strike at the Geneva Congress of the 
Alliance held on September 1, 1873,°%’ although it was universally 
admitted that this required a well-formed organisation of the 

4 See present edition, Vol. 4, p. 520; Der Volksstaat refers to the first German 
edition: Die Lage der Arbeitenden Klasse in England, Leipzig, 1845, p. 279.— Ed. 

The Bakuninists at Work.— II 585 

working class and plentiful funds. And there’s the rub. On the one 
hand the governments, especially if encouraged by _ political 
abstention, will never allow the organisation or the funds of the 
workers to reach such a level; on the other hand, political events 
and oppressive acts by the ruling classes will lead to the liberation 
of the workers long before the proletariat is able to set up such an 
ideal organisation and this colossal reserve fund. But if it had 
them, there would be no need to use the roundabout way of a 
general strike to achieve its goal. 

No one with any knowledge of the secret springs of the Alliance 
can doubt that the idea of using this well-tried method originated 
in the Swiss centre. Be that as it may, the Spanish leaders saw in 
this a way of doing something without actually delving in 
“politics” and they gladly took it. The miraculous qualities of a 
general strike were everywhere propounded and preparations were 
made to start it at Barcelona and Alcoy. 

Meanwhile the political situation was steadily heading for a 
crisis. Castelar and his associates, the old federal republican 
braggarts, were frightened by the movement, which had outgrown 
them. They were obliged to hand over the reigns of government 
to Pi y Margall,* who sought a compromise with the Intransigents. 
Of all the official republicans, Pi was the only Socialist, the only 
one who realised that the republic had to depend on the support 
of the workers. He promptly produced a programme of social 
measures which could be carried out immediately and would not 
only benefit the workers directly but eventually lead to further 
steps, thus at least giving the first impetus to the social revolution. 
But the Bakuninist members of the International, who were 
obliged to reject even the most revolutionary measures if they 
emanated from the “State”, preferred to support the most 
preposterous swindlers among the Intransigents rather than a 
minister. Pi’s negotiations with the Intransigents dragged on. The 
Intransigents began to lose patience, and the most hot-headed of 
them started a cantonal uprising in Andalusia. The leaders of the 
Alliance now had to act too if they did not want to trail in the 
wake of the intransigent bourgeois. And so a general strike was 
ordered. 

Presently, among other things, a poster was issued in Barcelona 
stating: 

“Workers! We are calling a general STRIKE to show the profound abhorrence we 

4 On June 11, 1873.— Ed 

feel on seeing the government using the army fight our brother workers, while 
neglecting the struggle against the Carlists”, etc.@ 

The workers of Barcelona—Spain’s largest industrial city, which 
has seen more barricade fighting than any other city in the 
world—were asked to oppose the armed government force not 
with arms in their hands, but with a general strike, that is, a 
measure directly involving only individual bourgeois, but not their 
collective representative—the State power. During the period of 
peacetime inaction, the workers of Barcelona had been able to 
listen to the inflammatory phrases of mild men like Alerini, Farga 
Pellicer and Vinas; but when the time came to act, when Alerini, 
Farga Pellicer and Vinas first announced their fine election 
programme, then proceeded to calm passions, and finally, instead 
of issuing a call to arms declared a general srrixz, the workers 
actually despised them. Even the weakest Intransigent showed 
more energy than the strongest member of the Alliance. The 
Alliance and the International, which was hoodwinked by it, lost all 
influence and when these gentlemen called for a general strike 
claiming that this would paralyse the government the workers 
simply ridiculed them. What the activities of the false International 
did achieve, however, was that Barcelona took no part in the 
cantonal uprising. Barcelona was the only town whose participa- 
tion could have provided firm support for the working-class 
element, which was everywhere strongly represented in the 
movement, and thus held out the prospect of the workers 
ultimately controlling the entire movement. Furthermore, with the 
participation of Barcelona, victory would have been as good as 
won. But Barcelona did not raise a finger; the workers of 
Barcelona, who had seen through the Intransigents and been 
cheated by the Alliance, remained inactive, thus allowing the 
Madrid government to secure the final victory. All of which did 
not prevent Alerini and Brousse, members of the Alliance (the 
report on the Alliance contained further details about them”), 
from. stating in their paper, the Solidarité Révolutionnaire: 

“The revolutionary movement is spreading like wildfire throughout the 
peninsula ... nothing has as yet happened in Barcelona, but the revolution is permanent in the 
market place!’’< 

a Engels probably quotes from La Solidarité Révolutionnaire, No. 6, July 16, 
1873.— Ed. 

b See this volume, pp. 488, 495, 507-10.— Ed. 

¢ “Le mouvement révolutionnaire...”, La Solidarité Révolutionnaire, No. 6, July 
16, 1873. Quotations below are taken from the same article.— Ed. 

The Bakuninists at Work.—II 587 

But it was the revolution of the Alliancists, which consists in 
beating the big drum and for this reason remains “permanently” 
in the same “place”’. 

At the same time the general strike became the order of the day 
in Alcoy. Alcoy is a new industrial town of some 30,000 
inhabitants, where the International, in its Bakuninist form, 
gained a foothold only a year ago and spread rapidly. Socialism, in 
any form, went down well with these workers, who until then had 
known nothing of the movement; the same thing happens in 
Germany where occasionally in some backward town the General 
Association of German Workers*” suddenly gains a large tempor- 
ary following. Alcoy was therefore chosen as the seat of the 
Bakuninist Federal Commission for Spain,” and it is the work of 
this Federal Commission that we are going to see here. 

On July 7, a workers’ meeting voted for a general srrixe and on 
the following day sent a deputation to the alcalde (the mayor) 
asking him to summon the manufacturers within 24 hours and 
present to them the workers’ demands. Albors, the alcalde, a 
bourgeois Republican, stalled off the workers, sent to Alicante for 
troops and advised the manufacturers not to yield but to barricade 
themselves in their houses. He himself would remain at his post. 
After a meeting with the manufacturers—we are here following 
the official report of the Alliance Federal Commission dated July 
14, 1873*—Albors, who had originally promised the workers to 
remain neutral, issued a proclamation in which he “insulted and 
slandered the workers and sided with the manufacturers thus 
destroying the rights and the freedom of the strikers and 
challenging them to fight”. How the pious wishes of a mayor can 
destroy the rights and the freedom of the strikers is not made 
clear. Anyway, the workers led by the Alliance notified the 
municipal council through a committee that if it did not intend to 
remain neutral during the strike as it promised, it had better 
resign in order to avoid a conflict. The committee was turned 
away and as it was leaving the town hall, the police opened fire on 
the peaceful and unarmed people standing in the square. This is 
how the fight started, according to the report of the Alliance. The 
people armed themselves, and a battle began which was said to 
have lasted “twenty hours”. On one side, the workers, whose 
number is given by the Solidarité Révolutionnaire as 5,000, on the 
other, 32 gendarmes in the town hall and a few armed men in 
four or five houses in the market place. These houses were burnt 

a “A los Trabajadores”, La Federacion, No. 206, July 26, 1873.— Ed 

down by the people in the good Prussian manner. Eventually the 
gendarmes ran out of ammunition and had to surrender. 

“There would have been less misfortunes to lament,” says the report of the 
Alliance Commission, “if the Alcalde Albors had not deceived the people by 
pretending to surrender and then cowardly ordering the murder of those who 
entered the town hall relying on his word. And the Alcalde himself would not have 
been killed by the justly enraged population had he not fired his revolver 
point-blank at those who went to arrest him.” 

And what were the casualties in this battle? 

“Although we cannot know exactly the number of dead and wounded” (on the 
people’s side) “we can nevertheless say that they numbered no less than ten. On the 
side of provokers there were no less than fifteen dead and wounded.” 

This was the first street battle of the Alliance. For twenty hours, 
5,000 men* fought against 32 gendarmes and a few armed 
bourgeois, and defeated them after they had run out of 
ammunition, losing ten men in all. The Alliance may well drum 
Falstaff’s dictum into the heads of its adepts that “the better part 
of valour is discretion”.” 

Needless to say, all the horror stories carried by the bourgeois 
papers about factories senselessly burnt down, numerous gen- 
darmes shot down, and of people having petrol poured over them 
and set on fire, are pure inventions. The victorious workers, even 
if led by members of the Alliance whose motto is, “to hell with 
ceremony!”, always treat their defeated adversaries far too 
generously, and so the latter accuse them of all the misdeeds which 
they themselves never fail to perpetrate when they are victorious. 

And so victory had been won. 

The Solidarité Révolutionnaire writes jubilantly: “Our friends in Alcoy, number- 
ing 5,000, are masters of the situation.” 

And what did these “masters” do with their “situation”? 

Here the report of the Alliance and its newspaper leave us in 
the lurch and we have to rely on the ordinary newspaper reports. 
From these we learn that a “Committee of Public Safety”, that is, a 
revolutionary government, was then set up in Alcoy. To be sure, 
at their Congress at Saint-Imier *” (Switzerland), on September 15, 
1872, the members of the Alliance decided that 

a Der Volksstaat does not give the number of people.— Ed. 
b W. Shakespeare, The First Part of King Henry IV, Act V, Scene 4.— Ed. 

The Bakuninists at Work.—II 589 

“any organisation of political, so-called provisional or revolutionary authority, 

can be nothing but a new fraud and would be just as dangerous for the proletariat 

as any of the now existing governments”.* 

The members of the Spanish Federal Commission, meeting at 
Alcoy, had moreover done everything they could to get this 
resolution adopted also by the Congress of the Spanish Section of 
the International. And yet we find that Severino Albarracin, a 
member of this Commission, and, according to some reports, also 
Francisco Tomas, its secretary, were members of this provisional 
and revolutionary government, the Committee of Public Safety, of 
Alcoy! 

And what did this Committee of Public Safety do? What 
measures did it adopt to bring about “the immediate and complete 
emancipation of the workers”? It forbade any man to leave the 
city, although women were allowed to do so, provided they ... had 
a pass! The enemies of all authority re-introducing a pass! 
Everything else was utter confusion, inactivity and helplessness. 

Meanwhile, General Velarde was coming up from Alicante with 
troops. The government had every reason for wishing to deal with 
the local insurrections in the provinces quietly. And the “masters 
of the situation” in Alcoy had every reason for wanting to 
extricate themselves from a situation which they did not know how 
to handle. Accordingly, Deputy Cervera, who acted as a go-between, 
had an easy task. The Committee of Public Safety resigned, and 
on July 12 the troops entered the town without meeting any 
resistance, the only promise made to the Committee of Public 
Safety for this being ... a general amnesty. The Alliance ‘masters 
of the situation” had once again extricated themselves from a tight 
spot. And there the Alcoy adventure ended. 

The Alliance report tells us that at Sanlucar de Barrameda, near 
Cadiz, 

“the Alcalde closed down the premises of the International and his threats and 
his incessant attacks on the personal rights of the citizens incensed the workers. A 
commission demanded of the minister observance of the law and the re-opening of 
the premises which had been arbitrarily closed down. Mr. Pi agreed to this in 
principle ... but refused to comply in practice. It became clear to the workers that 
the Government was determined to outlaw their Association; they dismissed the 
local authorities and appointed others in their place, who re-opened the premises 
of the Association.”> 

a “Les deux Congrés de Saint-Imier”, Bulletin de la Fédération jurassienne..., No. 
17-18, September 15-October 1, 1872, p. 13.— Ed. 
b “A los Trabajadores”, La Federacion, No. 206, July 26, 1873.— Ed. 

“In Sanlicar ... the people are masters of the situation!” the 
Solidarité Révolutionnaire writes triumphantly. The members of the 
Alliance, who here too, contrary to their anarchist principles, 
formed a revolutionary government, did not know what to do with 
their power. They wasted time in futile debates and paper 
resolutions, and when General Pavia, on August 5, after taking 
Seville and Cadiz, sent a few companies of the Soria brigade to 
Sanlucar he encountered ... no resistance. 

Such were the heroic deeds performed by the Alliance where it 
had no competition. 

III 

The street fighting in Alcoy was immediately followed by a 
revolt of the Intransigents in Andalusia. Pi y Margall was still at 
the helm, engaged in continuous negotiations with the leaders of 
this party with the object of forming a ministry with them; why 
then did they begin an uprising before the negotiations had 
failed? The reason for this rash action has never been properly 
explained; it is however certain, that the main concern of the 
Intransigents was the actual establishment of a federal republic as 
quickly as possible in order to seize power and the many new 
administrative posts that were to be created in the various cantons. 
The splitting up of Spain had been deferred too long by the 
Cortes in Madrid, and so they had to tackle the job themselves 
and proclaim sovereign cantons everywhere. The attitude hitherto 
maintained by the (Bakuninist) International, which since the 
elections was deeply involved in the actions of the Intransigents, 
gave grounds for counting on the Bakuninists’ support: indeed, 
had not the Bakuninists just seized Alcoy by force and were thus 
in open conflict with the government? The Bakuninists moreover 
had for years been preaching that all revolutionary action from 
above was an evil, and everything should be organised and carried 
through from below. And now here was an opportunity to apply 
the famous principle of autonomy from below, at least in a few 
towns. Predictably, the Bakuninist workers fell into the trap and 
pulled the chestnuts out of the fire for the Intransigents, only to be 
rewarded later by their allies with the usual kicks and bullets. 

What was the position of the members of the Bakuninist 
International in all this movement? They helped to evolve its 
federalist particularism; they put into practice as far as possible 
their anarchist ideal. The same Bakuninists who in Cordoba a few 

The Bakuninists at Work.— III 591 

months earlier had declared that to establish a revolutionary 
government was to betray and cheat the workers, the same 
Bakuninists now sat in all the revolutionary municipal govern- 
ments of Andalusia, but always in a minority, so that the 
Intransigents could do whatever they wished. While the latter 
retained the political and military leadership, the workers were put 
off with pompous phrases or resolutions purporting to introduce 
social reforms of the crudest and most meaningless sort, which 
moreover existed only on paper. As soon as the Bakuninist leaders 
demanded real concessions, they were scornfully repulsed. When 
talking to English newspaper correspondents, the Intransigent 
leaders of the movement hastened to dissociate themselves from 
these so-called “members of the International” and to renounce all 
responsibility for them, declaring that their leaders and all fugitives 
from the Paris Commune were being kept under strict police 
supervision. Finally, as we shall see, the Intransigents in Seville, 
during the battle with the government troops, fired also on their 
Bakuninist allies.” 

Thus it happened that within a few days the whole of Andalusia 
was in the hands of the armed Intransigents. Seville, Malaga, 
Granada, Cadiz, etc. were taken almost without resistance. Each 
town proclaimed itself a sovereign canton and set up a revolutio- 
nary: committee (junta). Murcia, Cartagena, and Valencia followed 
suit. A similar attempt, but of a more peaceful nature, was made 
in Salamanca. Thus, nearly all the large Spanish cities were held 
by the insurgents, with the exception of Madrid, the capital, which 
is purely a luxury city and hardly ever plays a decisive role, and of 
Barcelona. If Barcelona had risen success would have been almost 
assured, and in addition it would have provided powerful support 
for the working-class element of the movement. But, as we have 
seen, the Intransigents in Barcelona were comparatively powerless, 
whereas the Bakuninists, who were still very strong there at the 
time, used the general strike only for appeasement purposes. Thus, 
Barcelona this time was not at its post. 

Nevertheless, the uprising, though started in a senseless way, 
had a fair chance of success if conducted with some intelligence, 
even if in the manner of the Spanish military revolts, in which the 
garrison of one town rises, marches to the next town and wins 
over the garrison there which had been propagandised in advance, 

a Der Volksstaat (No. 106) printed the following three paragraphs, apparently 
by mistake, at the end of Article III. Engels replaced them when preparing the 
article for the 1894 collection Internationales aus dem Volksstaat (1871-1875).— 

21* 

and, growing like an avalanche, advances on the capital, until a 
successful engagement or the desertion to its side of the troops 
sent out against it, decides the victory. This method was eminently 
suited to the occasion. The insurgents had long been organised 
everywhere into volunteer battalions, whose discipline, it is true, 
was poor, but certainly no worse than that of the remnants of the 
old Spanish army, which for the most part had been disbanded. 
The only reliable troops the government had were the gendarmes 
(guardias civiles), and these were scattered all over the country. 
The thing was to prevent the gendarmes from mustering, and this 
could only be done by boldly giving battle in the open field. No 
great risk was involved in this since the government could send 
against the volunteers only troops that were just as undisciplined as 
they themselves. And if they wanted to win, this was the only way 
to go about it. 

But no. The federalism of the Intransigents and their Bakunin- 
ist tail consisted precisely in the fact that each town acted on its 
own, declaring that the important thing was not co-operation with 
other towns but separation from them, thus precluding any 
possibility of a combined attack. What was an unavoidable evil 
during the German Peasant War and the German insurrections of 
May 1849, namely, the fragmentation and isolation of the 
revolutionary forces which enabled the government troops to 
smash one revolt after the other,*’' was here proclaimed a 
principle of supreme revolutionary wisdom. Bakunin had that 
satisfaction. As early as September 1870 (in his Lettres a un 
frangais*) he had declared that the only way to drive the Prussians 
out of France by a revolutionary struggle was to do away with all 
forms of centralised leadership and leave each town, each village, 
each parish to wage war on its own. If one thus opposed the 
Prussian army under its centralised command with unfettered 
revolutionary passion victory would be ensured. Confronted with 
the collective mind of the French people, thrown at last on its own 
resources, the individual mind of Moltke would obviously sink into 
insignificance. The French then refused to see this, but in Spain 
Bakunin had won a brilliant victory, as we have already seen and 
shall yet see. 

Meanwhile, this uprising, launched without reason like a bolt 
from the blue, had made it impossible for Pi y Margall to continue 
his negotiations with the Intransigents. He was compelled to 

a[(M. Bakounine,] Lettres a un frangais sur la crise actuelle [Neuchatel, 
1870].— Ed. 

The Bakuninists at Work.— III 593 

resign,’ and was replaced by pure republicans like Castelar, 
undisguised bourgeois, whose primary aim was to crush the 
working-class movement, which they had previously used but 
which had now become a hindrance to them. One division under 
General Pavia was sent against Andalusia, another under General 
Campos against Valencia and Cartagena. The main body consisted 
of gendarmes drawn from all over Spain, all of them old soldiers 
whose discipline was still unshaken. Here too, as during the attacks 
of the Versailles army on Paris, the gendarmes were to bolster up 
the demoralised regulars and to form the spearhead of the 
attacking columns, a task which in both cases they fulfilled to the 
best of their abilities. Besides the gendarmes, the divisions 
contained a few rather diminished line regiments, so that each of 
them numbered some 3,000 men. This was all the Government 
was able to raise against the insurgents. 

General Pavia took the field round about July 20. A detachment 
of gendarmes and line troops under Ripoll occupied Cordoba on 
the 24th. On the 29th Pavia attacked the barricaded Seville, which 
fell to him on the 30th or 31st, the dates are often not clearly 
stated in these telegrams. Leaving behind a flying column to put 
down the surrounding country, he marched against Cadiz, whose 
defenders only fought on the approaches to the city, and with 
little spirit at that, and then, on August 4, they allowed themselves 
to be disarmed without resistance. In the days that followed, Pavia 
disarmed, also without resistance, Sanlucar de Barrameda, San 
Roque, Tarifa, Algeciras, and a great many other small towns, 
each of which had set itself up as a sovereign canton. At the same 
time he sent detachments against Malaga, which surrendered on 
August 3, and Granada, which surrendered on August 8, without 
offering any resistance. Thus by August 10, in less than a 
fortnight and almost without a struggle, the whole of Andalusia 
had been subdued. 

On July 26, Martinez Campos began the attack on Valencia. The 
revolt there had been raised by the workers. When the split in the 
Spanish International occurred, the real International had the 
majority in Valencia, and the new Spanish Federal Council was 
transferred there.*” Soon after the proclamation of the Republic, 
when revolutionary battles lay ahead, the Bakuninist workers of 
Valencia, mistrusting the Barcelona leaders who cloaked their 
appeasement policy with ultra-revolutionary phrases, offered the 
members of the real International their co-operation in all local 

* On July 18, 1873.— Ed 

movements. When the cantonal movement started, both groups, 
making use of the Intransigents, immediately attacked and ejected 
the troops. Who formed the Valencian junta remains unknown, 
but from the reports of the English newspaper correspondents it 
appears that workers definitely predominated in the junta, just as 
they did among the Valencian Volunteers. The same correspon- 
dents spoke of the Valencian insurgents with a respect which they 
were far from showing towards the other rebels, who were mostly 
Intransigents; they praised their discipline and the order which 
prevailed in the city, and predicted a long resistance and a hard 
struggle. They were not mistaken. Valencia, an open city, 
withstood the attacks of Campos’ division from July 26 to August 
8, that is longer than the whole of Andalusia. 

In the province of Murcia, the capital of the same name was 
occupied without a fight; after the fall of Valencia Campos moved 
against Cartagena, one of the strongest fortresses in Spain, 
protected on the landward side by a rampart and advanced forts 
on the commanding heights. The 3,000 government troops, who 
had no siege artillery whatsoever, and whose light field guns were 
of course powerless against the heavy artillery of the forts, had to 
confine themselves to laying siege to the city from the landward 
side. This was of little avail, however, as long as the people of 
Cartagena dominated the sea with the naval vessels they had 
captured in the harbour. The insurgents, who, while the fight had 
been going on in Valencia and Andalusia, were wholly preoc- 
cupied with their own affairs, began to think of the outside world 
after the other revolts had been quelled, when they themselves 
began to run short of money and provisions. Only then did they 
make an attempt to march on Madrid, which was at least 60 
German miles* away, more than twice as far as, for instance, 
Valencia or Granada! The expedition ended in disaster not far 
from Cartagena. The siege precluded any possibility of further 
land sorties, so they attempted sorties with the aid of the fleet. 
And what sorties! There could be no question of raising revolts 
again with the aid of Cartagena warships in the coastal towns 
which had recently been subdued. The fleet of the Sovereign 
Canton of Cartagena therefore confined itself to threatening to 
shell the other coastal towns from Valencia to Malaga, which, 
according to the theory of the people of Cartagena, were likewise 
sovereign—and if need be to shell them in actual fact if they 
failed to deliver on board the required provisions and war 

a The German mile is equal to 7,420,438 metres.— Ed. 

The Bakuninists at Work.—IV 595 

contribution in hard cash. While these cities, as sovereign cantons, 
had been fighting the government, Cartagena adhered to the 
principle of “every man for himself”. Now when they had been 
defeated the principle which was held to be valid was—‘‘everyone 
for Cartagena!” That was how the Intransigents of Cartagena and 
their Bakuninist supporters interpreted the federalism of the 
sovereign cantons. 

In order to reinforce the ranks of the fighters for liberty, the 
government of Cartagena released from the local jail about 1,800 
convicts—Spain’s worst robbers and murderers. After the disclos- 
ures made in the report on the Alliance there can no longer be 
any room for doubt that this revolutionary step was suggested to it 
by the Bakuninists. The report shows Bakunin enthusiastically 
advocating the “unleashing of all evil passions” and holding up 
the Russian brigand as a model for all true revolutionaries.* What is 
fair for the Russian is fair for the Spaniard. When the local 
government of Cartagena released the “evil passions” of the 1,800 
jailed cut-throats, thereby carrying demoralisation among _ its 
troops to the extreme limit, it acted wholly in the spirit of 
Bakunin. And when, instead of battering down its own fortifica- 
tions, the Spanish government awaited the fall of Cartagena 
through the internal disorganisation of its defenders, it was 
pursuing an entirely correct policy. 

IV 

Now let us hear what the report of the New Madrid Federation 
has to say about the whole movement. 

“On the second Sunday in August a Congress was to be held in Valencia, which, 
among other things, was to determine the attitude the Spanish International 
Federation was to adopt towards the important political events taking place in 
Spain since February 11, the day the Republic was proclaimed. But this 
nonsensical” (descabellada, literally: dishevelled) ‘cantonal uprising, which was 
such an abject failure and in which members of the International eagerly took part 
in almost all the insurgent provinces, has not only brought the work of the Federal 
Council to a standstill by dispersing most of its members, but has almost completely 
disorganised the local federations and, what is worse, exposed their members to the 
full measure of hatred and persecution that an ignominiously started and defeated 
popular insurrection always entails... 

“When the cantonal uprising started, when the juntas, ie., the cantonal 
governments, were formed, these people” (the Bakuninists) “who had spoken so 

a See this volume, pp. 520-21.— Ed. 

violently against political power, and accused us of authoritarianism, lost no time in 
joining those governments. And in important cities such as Seville, Cadiz, Sanlucar de 
Barrameda, Granada and Valencia, many members of the International who call 
themselves anti-authoritarians sat on the cantonal juntas with no programme other 
than that of autonomy for the provinces or cantons. This ts officially established by 
the proclamations and other documents issued by those juntas over the signatures 
of well-known members of this International. 

“Such a flagrant contradiction between theory and practice, between propagan- 
da and action, would be of small account if our Association could have derived any 
benefit from it, or if it could have advanced the organisation of our forces, or in 
any way furthered the attainment of our main goal—the emancipation of the 
working class. Just the opposite took place, as it was bound to in the absence of the 
primary condition, namely, the active collaboration of the Spanish proletariat, 
which could have been so easily achieved by acting in the name of the 
International. There was no agreement between the local federations; the 
movement was abandoned to individual or local initiative without leadership (apart 
from that which the mysterious Alliance was able to force upon it, and that Alliance to our 
shame still dominates the Spanish International) and without any programme other 
than that of our natural enemies, the bourgeois republicans. Thus, the cantonal 
movement suffered the most ignominious defeat without offering hardly any 
resistance, and dragging down with it also the prestige and organisation of the 
International in Spain. For every excess, every crime, every outrage that takes place 
the republicans today blame the members of the International. We are even assured, 
that at Seville during the fighting the Intransigents fired at their own allies, the 
members of the” (Bakuninist) “International. Taking clever advantage of our follies, 
the reactionaries are inciting the republicans to persecute us and vilify us in the eyes of 
the indifferent masses; it seems that what they were unable to achieve in the days of 
Sagasta, 1.e., to give the International a bad name among the great mass of Spanish 
workers, they may be able to achieve now. 

“A number of workers’ sections in Barcelona dissociated themselves from the 
International and publicly protested against the people of the newspaper La 
Federacion” (the main organ of the Bakuninists) “and their inexplicable attitude. In 
Jérez, Puerto de Santa Maria and elsewhere the federations have decided to 
dissolve themselves. The few members of the International who lived in Loja 
(Granada province) were expelled by the population. In Madrid, where people still 
enjoy the greatest freedom, the old” (Bakuninist) “federation shows no sign of life, 
while ours is compelled to remain inactive and silent if it does not want to take the 
blame for other people’s sins. In the northern cities the Carlist war, which is 
becoming more bitter day by day, precludes any activity on our part. Finally, in 
Valencia, where the government won the day after a struggle lasting a fortnight, 
the members of the International who have not fled are forced to remain in 
hiding, and the Federal Council has been dissolved.” 

So much for the Madrid report. As we see, it agrees in all 
particulars with the above historical account. 

What then is the result of our whole investigation? 

1. As soon as they were faced with a serious revolutionary 
situation, the Bakuninists had to throw the whole of their old 
programme overboard. First they sacrificed their doctrine of 
absolute abstention from political, and especially electoral, ac- 

The Bakuninists at Work.—IV 597 

tivities. Then anarchy, the abolition of the State, shared the same 
fate. Instead of abolishing the State they tried, on the contrary, to 
set up a number of new, small states. They then dropped the 
principle that the workers must not take part in any revolution 
that did not have as its aim the immediate and complete 
emancipation of the proletariat, and they themselves took part in a 
movement that was notoriously bourgeois. Finally they went 
against the dogma they had only just proclaimed—that the 
establishment of a revolutionary government is but another fraud, 
another betrayal of the working class—for they sat quite 
comfortably in the juntas of the various towns, and moreover 
almost everywhere as an impotent minority outvoted and political- 
ly exploited by the bourgeoisie. 

2. This renunciation of the principles they had always been 
preaching was made moreover in the most cowardly and deceitful 
manner and was prompted by a guilty conscience, so that neither 
the Bakuninists themselves nor the masses they led had any 
programme or knew what they wanted when they joined the 
movement. What was the natural consequence of this? It was that 
the Bakuninists either prevented any action from being taken, as 
in Barcelona, or drifted into sporadic, desultory and _ senseless 
uprisings, as in Alcoy and Sanlicar de Barrameda; or that the 
leadership of the uprising was taken over by the intransigent 
bourgeois, as was the case in most of the revolts. Thus, when it 
came to doing things, the ultra-revolutionary rantings of the 
Bakuninists either turned into appeasement or into uprisings that 
were doomed to failure, or, led to their joining a bourgeois party 
which exploited the workers politically in the most disgraceful 
manner and treated them to kicks into the bargain. 

3. Nothing remains of the so-called principles of anarchy, free 
federation of independent groups, etc., but the boundless, and 
senseless fragmentation of the revolutionary resources, which 
enabled the government to conquer one city after another with a 
handful of soldiers, practically unresisted. 

4. The outcome of all this is that not only have the once so well 
organised and numerous Spanish sections of the International— 
both the false and the true ones—found themselves involved in 
the downfall of the Intransigents and are now actually dissolved, 
but are also having ascribed to them innumerable atrocities, 
without which the philistines of all nationalities cannot imagine a 
workers’ uprising, and this may make impossible, perhaps for 
years to come, the international re-organisation of the Spanish 
proletariat. 

5. In short, the Bakuninists in Spain have given us an 
unparalleled example of how a revolution should not be made.