Before the Final Analysis: Marxist Materialism vs. Bakuninist Idealism
By: Lev Orenberg
Tags: Anarchism, Socialism, Materialism, Karl Marx, Communism

Spending enough time in enough multi-tendency left-wing spaces, one is almost guaranteed to hear the phrase, “In the final analysis, we are all anarchists.” While this slogan can be useful for promoting unity, it ignores the massive practical and philosophical disagreements between anarchists and Marxists that make the road to the “final analysis” a long and bumpy one. These essential disagreements are well represented in the combative dialogue between early Anarchist theorist Mikhail Bakunin, and the founders of Marxism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The disagreements between these theorists ranged from the causes of social revolution, the revolutionary subject of the social revolution, to the role of the state or lack thereof.

On the causes of social revolution, Bakunin argues staunchly from the position of idealism. Not being a Hegelian, he does not argue that a “world spirit” gives energy to respective ideas, rather that the beginning of social revolution occurs when people are able to think abstractly about their rights. He writes, “They do not revolt because they have no adequate perception of their rights nor any confidence in their own powers…the first condition i.e., the ability to think abstractly has not yet been attained by the masses”(Bakunin “The Franco Prussian War and the Paris Commune” page 209) positing that the masses of people must be made aware of their rights in order to create the atmosphere for revolution. According to Bakunin, the material conditions of poverty alone are not enough to produce social revolution, and “poverty and desperation are still not sufficient to generate social revolution…It is necessary that the populace have a general idea of their rights and a deep, passionate, quasi-religious belief in the validity of these rights.”(Bakunin “Final Years” page 335) For Bakunin, social revolution relies first on the people’s knowledge of their rights, and second on their absolute faith in these rights.

This focus on ideas and belief would lead Marx and Engels, both materialists, to refer to Bakunin jokingly as a “Pope” or “Jesuit”. In contrast, Marx and Engels offer the materialist view. Marx says, “A radical social revolution depends on the particular historical conditions of economic development; they are its prerequisites. Thus a revolution is possible only where, together with capitalist production, the industrial proletariat occupies at least an important place within the population.”(Marx “ From the Conspectus of Bakunin’s book State and Anarchy” page 149) That revolution does not just emerge as a historic phenomenon from a Hegelian geist, the right people receiving the right ideas or “will” (Marx “From the Conspectus of Bakunin’s book State and Anarchy” page 150) but that people are forced into revolution under capitalism as the bourgeoisie proletarianize and further impoverish the population. Marx in broad terms describes the beginning of the next social revolution thusly, “[the proletarian] becomes a pauper and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society.”(Marx and Engels “Manifesto of the Communist Party” page 483) For Marx and Engels the people can only gain consciousness and desire for social revolution when they are put into material conditions, specifically, those of industrial capitalism, that allow for this consciousness to develop and make them poor enough that this consciousness develops into a working-class movement to overthrow the bourgeoisie.

Bakunin argues that there was no single revolutionary class and also didn’t conceive of class in the scientific terms that Marx did. He thought that generally the non-capitalist classes would come together to overthrow the capitalist class, saying that revolutionary subjects will be, “The people, the poor class, which without doubt constitutes the greatest part of humanity.”(Bakunin on Anarchism page 57) That all the “people” who suffer under the yolk of the state and capitalism, once properly educated with their rights, will at one point spontaneously rise up in social revolution. Bakunin argued that the Marxist program was too dogmatic and was therefore not pragmatic. Bakunin attacked Marx, saying, “If the proletariat is to be the ruling class it may be asked then whom will it rule?…It might be the peasant rabble for example, which, as we know does not enjoy the favor of the Marxists.”(Bakunin “Statism and Anarchy” page 177) He worried that what he saw as Marx’s dogmatic love for the proletariat and hatred of the peasantry would, in the event of a successful proletarian revolution subject the rural peasants to exploitation, thereby making the system just as despotic as before, simply with a change of leadership. Bakunin argued that the peasantry should, for all their shortcomings be key in any revolution because they possess great revolutionary potential, saying, “It is true that the peasants, being petty landlords are to a considerable extent egoistic and reactionary, but this has not affected their instinctive hatred of the “fine gentleman” and they hate the bourgeois landlords, who enjoy the bounty of the earth without cultivating it with their own hands.” (Bakunin The Franco Prussian War and the Paris Commune page 189) For Bakunin the anti-intellectual and anti-cosmopolitan attributes of the peasantry allowed them to become a great revolutionary force that would work with the proletariat and other oppressed classes, and because of this revolutionary potential, they should not be ignored. Bakunin thought that instead of falling into what he saw as Marx’s anti-rural and anti-peasant attitudes and thinking about how to best malign, manipulate or control the peasantry for the sake of proletarian revolution, “It is a question of establishing a program of action which will overcome the individualism and conservatism of the peasants and not only prevent their individualism from propelling them into the camp of reaction but enable that individualism to serve and ensure the triumph of the revolution.”(Bakunin The Franco Prussian War and the Paris Commune page 197) It is imperative for Bakunin that social revolution that its program include the peasants both because they are oppressed workers and because failure to do so would mean their fall into reaction, possibly dooming the social revolution.

Marx and Engels would disagree with Bakunin’s characterization of their position towards the peasantry and say rather than their position being dogmatic, it is simply rooted in scientific analysis. While Marx clearly states, “Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of modern industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.”(Marx and Engels “Manifesto of the Communist Party” page 481–482) Making it clear that Marx sees the proletariat as the most revolutionary class, however, contrasting Bakunin’s characterization this doesn’t mean the complete maligning of the peasants. Marx says in response to Bakunin, “to have any chance of success [in the proletarian social revolution][the proletariat] must mutatis mutandis be able immediately to do at least as much for the peasants as the French bourgeoisie during its revolution did for the French peasants of the time. A fine idea to assume that the rule of the workers stands for the subjugation of agricultural workers.”(Marx “ From the Conspectus of Bakunin’s book State and Anarchy” page 149) Marx agrees with Bakunin that the peasantry are necessary for a successful revolution, and thus suggests that the proletariat must placate and win over the peasantry, just as the French bourgeoisie did during their revolution. However, for Marx, the peasants cannot play the same role as the proletariat, as the peasants exist in completely different economic conditions from the industrial proletariat, but they still have a role to play in social revolution, albeit more auxiliary than Bakunin would like.

With the roots of social revolution and the revolutionary subjects established, now comes a question of the goal of social revolution. Bakunin says the goal of social revolution is to “Abolish all states, destroy bourgeois civilization, organize freely from below upward, by means of free associations- organize the unshackled laboring hordes, the whole of liberated humanity, create a new world for all mankind.”(Bakunin Statism and Anarchy 197) For Bakunin, a successful social revolution means the complete and immediate liquidation of the state and freedom for all people. This is in stark opposition to the Marxist goal of, “formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.”(Marx and Engels “Manifesto of the Communist Party” page 484) Bakunin would say that this conquest of political power by the proletariat would not in fact liberate the people but in fact, “constitute their fourth governing class.”(Bakunin The Franco Prussian War and the Paris Commune page 294) That a conquest of state power by the proletariat would simply continue the oppressive state structure and not liberate anyone, because the existence of a state requires a ruling class separate from the people. This is because for Bakunin the sole objective of the modern state, regardless of the ruling class, “is to organize the most intensive exploitation of the people’s labor for the benefit of capital concentrated in a very small number of hands.”(Bakunin Statism and Anarchy pg 12) Therefore, the state is simply a mechanism of exploitation of the masses that rewards those select few at the top while continually punishing everyone else. Furthermore, Bakunin says no level of representation in a state can adequately manage or emancipate people. Bakunin writes, “This [ruling] minority even if it were a thousand times elected by universal suffrage and controlled in its acts by popular institutions, unless it were endowed with omniscience, omnipresence and the omnipotence which the theologians attribute to God, could not possibly know and foresee the needs of its people, or satisfy with an even justice those interests which are most legitimate and pressing. There will always be discontented people because there will always be some who are sacrificed.”(Bakunin The Franco Prussian War and the Paris Commune page 318) For Bakunin no ruling class, feudal, bourgeois, or proletarian will be able to adequately represent the people as they will be managing them as a class above.

However, Marx and Engels would agree that the abolition of the state is necessary, saying that, “All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society.”(Engels “On Authority” page 105) They however see the destruction of the state and class society not as an immediate action, but as a process carried out through the political domination of the proletariat.(On the Political Action of the Working Class page 53) Marx says of the necessity of the state, “[A]s other classes, and the capitalist class in particular, still exist, and as long as the proletariat fights against them (for its enemies and the old organization of society do not vanish as a result of its coming to power) it must employ coercive measures, that is, government measures; so long it is still a class itself, and the economic conditions which give rise to class struggle and the existence of classes have not yet disappeared and must be forcibly removed or transformed, and the process of their transformation accelerated by the use of force.”(Marx “From The Conspectus of Bakunin’s Book State and Anarchy” page 148) For Marx, the state is a necessary tool of the working class to meet bourgeois force with force and to transform the material and social basis of society into one devoid of class, and therefore, devoid of the need for a political state apparatus. On the question of democracy in the proletarian state Marx clearly rebuffs Bakunin’s dismissal of it with, “This democratic drivel, political claptrap is asinine. Elections are a political form which exists in the smallest Russian commune and artel. The nature of the elections is determined not by name, but by the economic basis, the economic interrelation of the voters, and from the moment when the functions have ceased to be political ones (1) government functions no longer exist; (2) the distribution of general functions becomes a routine matter and does not entail any domination; (3) elections completely lose their present political character.”(Marx “From The Conspectus of Bakunin’s Book State and Anarchy” page 151) Marx deflects Bakunin’s dismissal of proletarian state democracy with democracy’s organic and historical roots and practice in peasant society, showing that elections are a manifestation of class power, through economic interrelation, and collective class management of the tasks of daily life. Going further on his refutation of Bakunin, Marx asserts that since elections are basically the political mechanism of management, that in a society that has advanced past class society, and thus past the need for politics, these elected positions will become purely managerial, and thus the state will wither away.

Bakunin argues against Marx and Engels from a position totally lacking in scientific analysis and deeply rooted in idealism. At every turn he advocates “will”, “morality” and “absolute freedom”, but only as political platitudes, totally devoid of any material basis. Bakunin is rebuffed at every turn by Marx’s and Engels’ scientific and materialist analysis. Where Bakunin advocates for will and knowledge as the foundation of social revolution, Marx and Engels prove its roots in material conditions. Where Bakunin says the “working class” generally will rise up due to knowledge of and demand for their rights, Marx and Engels scientifically examine the conditions of each class and conclude that the proletariat, due to its concentration in industrial cities and increasing poverty is most likely to initiate and lead social revolution. Where Bakunin demands an end to the state and state democracy as oppressive institutions, Marx and Engels show the necessity and historical roots of proletarian democracy and state control and its necessity in the quest for a stateless society. Though in the final analysis Bakunin, Marx and Engels all strive for a stateless society, either anarchy or communism, at every turn Marx and Engels, due to their scientific and materialist analysis, are able to counter the idealist positions of Bakunin and provide a coherent political program and a pathway towards human liberation and an end to class society where Bakunin can only provide moralistic sloganeering.