Mikhail Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy

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Mikhail Bakunin Statism and Anarchy selected excerpts “A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts with his deepest convictions. Then, whatever the situation he may be in, he always knows what he must say and do. He may fall, but he cannot bring shame upon himself or his cause. If we seek the liberation of the people by means of a lie, we will surely grow confused, go astray, and loose sight of our objective, and if we have any influence at all on the people we will lead them astray as well—in other words, we will be acting in the spirit of reaction and to its benefit.” […] “Cooperation in all its forms is undeniably a rational and just mode of future production. But for it to achieve its objective—liberation of all the workers and their full compensation and satisfaction—all forms of land and capital must become collective property. Until that occurs, cooperation in the majority of cases will be crushed by the almighty competition of big capital and big landholding. In the rare cases when some producers’ association, invariably more or less isolated, does succeed in withstanding and surviving this struggle, the result of its success will merely be the rise of a new privileged class of fortunate collectivists within the destitute mass of the proletariat. Thus, under the existing conditions of social economy, cooperation cannot liberate the worker masses. Nevertheless, it does offer the benefit, even now, of accustoming the workers to unite, organize, and independently manage their own affairs.” […] ..since we ourselves are deeply convinced atheists, enemies of any religious creed, and materialists, whenever we have occasion to speak with the people about religion we are obliged to give full expression to our lack of belief—I will go further and say our hostile attitude to religion. We should reply honestly to all their questions on this subject, and, when necessary, that is, when there is a prospect of success, we must even try to explain and prove to them the correctness of our views. But we should not ourselves seek opportunities for such discussions. We should not place the religious question in the forefront of our propaganda among the people. It is our profound conviction that to do so is synonymous with betrayal of the people’s cause.” […] “The most terrible poverty, however, even when it strikes a proletariat numbering in the many millions, is not a sufficient guarantee of revolution. Nature has given man an astonishing and, indeed, sometimes despairing, patience, and the devil knows what he will not endure when, along with poverty that condemns him to unheard-of privations and slow starvation, he is also endowed with obtuseness, emotional numbness, lack of any consciousness of his rights, and the kind of imperturbability and obedience that particularly characterize the east Indians and the Germans, among all nations. Such a fellow will never take heart; he will die, but he will not rebel.”

Mikhail Bakunin

Statism and Anarchy

selected excerpts

“A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts with his deepest convictions. Then, whatever the situation he may be in, he always knows what he must say and do. He may fall, but he cannot bring shame upon himself or his cause. If we seek the liberation of the people by means of a lie, we will surely grow confused, go astray, and loose sight of our objective, and if we have any influence at all on the people we will lead them astray as well—in other words, we will be acting in the spirit of reaction and to its benefit.”

[…]

“Cooperation in all its forms is undeniably a rational and just mode of future production. But for it to achieve its objective—liberation of all the workers and their full compensation and satisfaction—all forms of land and capital must become collective property. Until that occurs, cooperation in the majority of cases will be crushed by the almighty competition of big capital and big landholding. In the rare cases when some producers’ association, invariably more or less isolated, does succeed in withstanding and surviving this struggle, the result of its success will merely be the rise of a new privileged class of fortunate collectivists within the destitute mass of the proletariat. Thus, under the existing conditions of social economy, cooperation cannot liberate the worker masses. Nevertheless, it does offer the benefit, even now, of accustoming the workers to unite, organize, and independently manage their own affairs.”

[…]

..since we ourselves are deeply convinced atheists, enemies of any religious creed, and materialists, whenever we have occasion to speak with the people about religion we are obliged to give full expression to our lack of belief—I will go further and say our hostile attitude to religion. We should reply honestly to all their questions on this subject, and, when necessary, that is, when there is a prospect of success, we must even try to explain and prove to them the correctness of our views. But we should not ourselves seek opportunities for such discussions. We should not place the religious question in the forefront of our propaganda among the people. It is our profound conviction that to do so is synonymous with betrayal of the people’s cause.”

[…]

“The most terrible poverty, however, even when it strikes a proletariat numbering in the many millions, is not a sufficient guarantee of revolution. Nature has given man an astonishing and, indeed, sometimes despairing, patience, and the devil knows what he will not endure when, along with poverty that condemns him to unheard-of privations and slow starvation, he is also endowed with obtuseness, emotional numbness, lack of any consciousness of his rights, and the kind of imperturbability and obedience that particularly characterize the east Indians and the Germans, among all nations. Such a fellow will never take heart; he will die, but he will not rebel.”