page_title: Collectivist anarchism
section_title: First International
hierarchical_section_title: Collectivist anarchism / First International
caption_attribution_description: English: Mikhail Bakunin
context_page_description: Collectivist anarchism, also referred to as anarchist collectivism and anarcho-collectivism, is a revolutionary socialist doctrine and anarchist school of thought that advocates the abolition of both the state and private ownership of the means of production as it envisions in its place the means of production being owned collectively whilst controlled and self-managed by the producers and workers themselves. Notwithstanding the name, collectivism anarchism is seen as a blend of individualism and collectivism.
  For the collectivization of the means of production, collectivist anarchism originally envisaged that workers will revolt and forcibly collectivize the means of production. Once collectivization takes place, money would be abolished to be replaced with labour notes and workers' salaries would be determined in democratic organizations of voluntary membership based on job difficulty and the amount of time they contributed to production. These salaries would be used to purchase goods in a communal market.
context_section_description: Giuseppe Fanelli met Bakunin at Ischia in 1866. In October 1868, Bakunin sponsored Fanelli to travel to Barcelona to share his libertarian visions and recruit revolutionists to the International. Fanelli's trip and the meeting he organised during his travels provided the catalyst for the Spanish exiles, the largest workers' and peasants' movement in modern Spain and the largest anarchist movement in modern Europe. Fanelli's tour took him first to Barcelona, where he met and stayed with Elie Recluse. Recluse and Fanelli were at odds over Recluse's friendships with Spanish republicans and Fanelli soon left Barcelona for Madrid. Fanelli stayed in Madrid until the end of January 1869, conducting meetings to introduce Spanish workers, including Anselmo Lorenzo, to the First National. In February 1869, Fanelli left Madrid, journeying home via Barcelona. He met with painter Josep Lluís Pellicer and his cousin Rafael Farga i Pellicer, along with others who were to play an important role establishing the International in Barcelona as well as the Alliance section.
  In 1870, Bakunin led a failed uprising in Lyon on the principles later exemplified by the Paris Commune, calling for a general uprising in response to the collapse of the French government during the Franco-Prussian War, seeking to transform an imperialist conflict into social revolution, or what Vladimir Lenin later termed revolutionary defeatism. In his Letters to A Frenchman on the Present Crisis, Bakunin also argued for a revolutionary alliance between the working class and the peasantry, advocated a system of militias with elected officers as part of a system of self-governing communes and workplaces and argued the time was ripe for revolutionary action, saying that "we must spread our principles, not with words but with deeds, for this is the most popular, the most potent, and the most irresistible form of propaganda.
  These ideas corresponded strikingly close with the program of the Paris Commune in 1871, much of which was developed by followers of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon as Marxists were almost entirely absent from the Commune. Bakunin was a strong supporter of the Paris Commune, which was brutally suppressed by the French government. He saw the Paris Commune as above all a "rebellion against the State" and commended the Communards for rejecting not only the state, but also revolutionary dictatorship. In a series of powerful pamphlets, he defended the Paris Commune and the International against the Italian nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini, thereby winning over many Italian republicans to the International and the cause of revolutionary socialism. The collectivist anarchists at first used the term collectivism to distinguish themselves from the mutualism of the followers of Proudhon and the state socialists associated with Karl Marx. In his 1867 essay "Federalism, Socialism, and Anti-Theologism", Bakunin wrote that "we shall always protest against anything that may in any way resemble communism or state socialism" which Bakunin regarded as fundamentally authoritarian.
  Bakunin's disagreements with Marx which led to the attempt by the Marx party to expel him at the Hague Congress in 1872 illustrated the growing divergence between the anti-authoritarian sections of the International, which advocated the direct revolutionary action and organization of the workers and peasants in order to abolish the state and capitalism; and the sections allied with Marx, which advocated the conquest of political power by the working class. Bakunin was "Marx's flamboyant chief opponent" and "presciently warned against the emergence of a communist authoritarianism that would take power over working people".
  The anti-authoritarian majority, which included most sections of the International, created their own International at the 1872 St. Imier Congress, adopted a revolutionary anarchist program and repudiated the Hague resolutions, rescinding Bakunin's alleged expulsion. Although Bakunin accepted elements of Marx's class analysis and theories regarding capitalism, acknowledging "Marx's genius
caption: Collectivist anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, whose anti-authoritarian majority created their own International
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