Mikhail Bakunin: The Philosophical Basis of His Anarchism

273 Pages·2002·3.08 MB·English

by  Paul McLaughlin

M B :
IKHAIL AKUNIN
T P B
HE HILOSOPHICAL ASIS
H
OF IS
A
NARCHISM
P M L
AUL C AUGHLIN
Algora
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN:

THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF HIS ANARCHISM

http://avaxho.me/blogs/ChrisRedfield
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN:

THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF HIS ANARCHISM

PAUL MCLAUGHLIN

Algora Publishing
New York
© 2002 by Algora Publishing.
All Rights Reserved.
www.algora.com

No portion of this book (beyond what is permitted by
Sections 107 or 108 of the United States Copyright Act of 1976)
may be reproduced by any process, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form, or by any means, without the
express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 1-892941-84-8 (softcover)
ISBN: 1-892941-85-6 (hardcover)

Library of Congress Card Number: 2002-001934

McLaughlin, Paul.
Mikhail Bakunin : the philosophical basis of his anarchism /
by Paul McLaughlin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-892941-84-8 (alk. paper)
1. Bakunin, Mikhail Aleksandrovich, 1814-1876. I. Title.
HX914.7.B34 M35 2002
335'.83—dc21
2002001934

Printed in the United States

Front Cover: Portrait of Bakunin (1814 - 1876)
TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1

Bakunin as Philosopher? 1
Marxist Analysis 2
Liberal Analysis 6
Two Further Considerations 12
The Structure of the Essay 14
Notes to Introduction 16

PART ONE:
BAKUNIN'S DIALECTIC AND THE CRITIQUE OF SPECULATION 21
1.1 The Reaction in Germany: Freedom and its Opponents 21
1.2 The Reaction in Context 23
1.3 Democracy and Revolution 29
1.4 Revolution and Metaphysics 30
1.5 Consistent and 'Mediating' Reaction 35
1.6 Objections 40
1.7 Historical Logics: Bakunin and Kuhn 42
1.8 Popular Revolution 46
1.9 The Negative Dialectic 48
1.10 Toward Revolutionary Action 53
1.11 Preface to Hegel's Gymnasial Lectures: Toward Naturalism 62
1.12 Negation: Bakunin and Bauer 68
1.13 Bakunin and Proudhon: Toward Anarchism 71
Notes to Part One 75

IX
PART TWO:
BAKUNIN'S NATURALISM AND THE CRITIQUE OF THEOLOGISM 103
2.1 The Totality of Nature 103
2.2 'Dialectics' and 'Materialism' 106
2.3 Natural Order and the 'Divine Legislator' 109
2.4 The Totality of Science 111
2.5 The Logic of Materialism 116
2.6 The Genesis of Religion 122
2.7 Reason, Freedom, and History 125
2.8 Fetishism, Polytheism, and Monotheism 130
2.9 The Development of Christianity 137
2.10 Christianity, Reason, and Freedom 141
2.11 Forms of Christian Faith 147
2.12 Bakunin and Kant 151
2.13 Bakunin and Hegel 155
2.14 Bakunin and Feuerbach: On Religion 161
2.15 Interlude: Bakunin and Marx 165
2.16 Bakunin and Feuerbach: On Philosophy 186
2.17 Interlude: Bakunin and Marx Revisited 194
2.18 Bakunin and Feuerbach: On Naturalism 197
2.19 Bakunin and Comte 206
Notes to Part Two 228

CONCLUSION 247
Notes to Conclusion 253

Select Bibliography 255

Index of Names 267
X
Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the following: Prof. David McLellan for his level-headed ad-
vice, welcome encouragement, and lentils; Martin Rodden, Maciej Malolep-
szy, Philippe Vandendaelle, and others for hours of instructive conversation
(apologies for endless talk of Bakunin and my work on him); Malgorzata Su-
lislawska for the motivation to complete this project; Marta Maj-decka for
having the decency to tolerate me of late; and my family — my brother
Eugene (for English transport and beer tokens), my sister Aoife (for pro-
longed use of her computer), my sister Cara (for book acquisition and Hap-
kin imports), and, most of all, my mother Maura McLaughlin (for everything
that long-suffering Irish mothers are known to put up with, and more, be-
sides).

XI
INTRODUCTION

Bakunin as Philosopher?

The primary purpose of this essay, as the title indicates, is to exam-
ine the philosophical foundations of Mikhail Bakunin’s social thought.
Thus it is concerned not so much with the explication of the anarchist
position of Bakunin as such as with the basic philosophy which under-
pins it. This philosophy has, as far as I can determine, two central com-
ponents: a negative dialectic or revolutionary logic; and a naturalist on-
tology, a naturalistic account of the structure of being or reality. These
two components are analyzed in the two main sections of this essay —
but a preliminary question is begged, relating to the very significance of
Bakunin as a philosophical thinker, the very significance of this apparent
philosophical “non-entity” (Karl Marx’s judgment, seemingly confirmed
by Bakunin’s absence from the philosophical canon). The question might
be put in the following way: is Bakunin worthy of philosophical consid-
eration?
The mass of scholarship — or certainly Anglophone scholarship —
on Bakunin holds that he is not. Anglophones — not surprisingly, given
the ideological order in Anglophone countries — are especially hostile;
Bakunin is generally regarded more sympathetically and treated more
seriously in Latin countries, for instance. Due to the extent of this hostil-
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Mikhail Bakunin
ity, and the sheer orthodoxy by now of this hostile interpretation in the
Anglophone world — to say nothing of my own background — it is An-
glophone scholarship (and the “foreign” element that it has adopted)
that is of utmost concern in what is undeniably a broadly sympathetic
(though not uncritical) treatment of Bakunin.
By and large, Bakunin scholarship (if it can be called that) falls into
two categories — alas, two ideological categories: Marxist and liberal.
Conservative analysis of Bakunin is less conspicuous. Nevertheless Eric
Voegelin, whose views will be outlined below, has made a serious contri-
bution from this perspective. What is most noteworthy about the case of
Voegelin is that it supports an argument of Bakunin’s Die Reaktion in
Deutschland (The Reaction in Germany) (1842): that the conflict between
consistent revolutionaries and “consistent reactionaries” is marked by
more honesty than the conflict between the former and “mediating reac-
tionaries”.

Marxist Analysis

Marxist analysis of Bakunin is, it appears, predetermined by his less
than flattering analysis of the master (which will be attended to directly
later). Indeed, Marxist arguments against Bakunin are clearly identifiable
as arguments from authority (every possible pun intended). Thus Bakunin
emerges as a “voluntarist” with no understanding of political economy or
the workings of capital, that is to say, as an impatient and “apolitical”
“bandit” and a theoretical “ignoramus” — for the simple reason that he
dares to disagree with the historically disputed and, as I will argue, phi-
losophically tenuous doctrine, as he dared to cross Marx in his revolu-
tionary activity. This damning indictment of Bakunin is made in spite of
the fact that not one Marxist has actually conducted an in-depth analy-
sis of the theoretical writings of Bakunin. Hence one might accuse Marx-
ist scholars of being, at the very least, uninformed.
Examples of this level of Marxist scholarship are numerous, even
excluding the most dubious “Marxist-Leninist” material. A standard ex-
ample is George Lichtheim. (Lichtheim, like Francis Wheen [see below],
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Introduction
is marxist [note the lower-case “m”] at least to the extent that he is gen-
erally sympathetic to Marx and that he sides with Marx against Bakunin
on the major points of their controversy.) His views on Bakunin encap-
sulate the Marxist critique: basically, Bakunin is no thinker, no philoso-
pher, no theorist, but a mere “agitator”. “He remained, one may fairly say
[?], all his life a man of action rather than a thinker”. The “all his life”
phrase is prevalent among those scholars, both Marxist and liberal (as
we will see), who seek to impose a uniform and simplistic account on the
complex intellectual biography of Bakunin. Hence, we are told that he
“remained all his life” either a mindless revolutionary (the Marxist line)
or a hopelessly idealistic intellectual (the liberal line). In either case,
however, he has no philosophical merit: on this point liberals and Marx-
ists concur. Thus while the liberal maintains that Bakunin was a
thinker — but a poor one — the Marxist maintains that he was not
really a thinker at all, but to the extent that he was, he was a poor one.
As Lichtheim puts it: “There remains the philosophical aspect, for Baku-
nin of course had to have a philosophy — as a former Hegelian he could
hardly afford to be without one”. But, as for this philosophy, it was mere
“muddled thinking [which] never rose above the level of the professional
agitator with a few fixed ideas and a stock of ready-made phrases”. (This
notion is echoed in an essay of Isaiah Berlin’s, as we will see shortly.)
There are a number of criticisms to be made of Lichtheim’s account.
Firstly, he misunderstands (or misrepresents) the genesis of Bakunin’s
thought. Repeating the Marxist orthodoxy, he associates Bakunin as
closely as possible with Proudhon, the “petty bourgeois” quasi-liberal.
(Indeed, even the detested Proudhon is given more credit than Bakunin;
at least he was “a theorist, though a self-made one”. “Self-made”, a stan-
dard Marxist insult with respect to Proudhon, presumably means a hick
not educated at the University of Berlin.) While Proudhon was a major
influence on Bakunin, to leave it at that, citing (the misrepresented)
Proudhon alone, is to obscure the diversity of influences on Bakunin and
the complexity of his intellectual development — no doubt with the in-
tention of simplifying his thought.
Secondly, in this context, Lichtheim simply fails to grasp Bakunin’s
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