The Bakuninists at Work (K. Marx, F. Engels)

The Bakuninists at Work
Author	K. Marx, F. Engels
Written in	1873 September-October
First published	1873-11-2 Der Volksstaat, Oct. 31, Nov. 2 & 5, 1873
Source	https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1873/bakunin/

I

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 revolutionary    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 Congress.

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 industrialIy that there can be no question 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 individuals, could act on their own as they thought fitt 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 intervention 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 Alfonsists395 stood still less chance at the time; as for the Carlists, they, as usual, preferred civil war to an election campaign. 396 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; 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 individuaIs 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.

II

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 humbIy 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 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, 1873,397 although it was universally admitted that this required a well-formed organisation of the working class and plentifuI 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 promptIy produced a programme of social measures which could be carried out immediateIy and would not only benefit the workers directly but eventually lead to 1further 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 Intransigent I s rather than a minister. Pi's negotiations with the Intransigent i s 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 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 Vifias; 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 strike, 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 participation 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 (tbhe 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!

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 temporary following. Alcoy was therefore chosen as the seat of the Bakuninist Federal Commission for Spain, as the seat of the Bakuninist Federal Commission for Spain,399 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 strike 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 official1 report of the Alliance Federal Commission dated July 14, 1873a—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 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 gendarmes 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, numbering 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

"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 passl 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 Sanlûcar de Barrameda, near Cadiz,

the Alcalde closed down the premises of the InternationalI 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."

"In Sanlûcar ... 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 t , 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 Intransigent I s 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 federaI 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 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 governments 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 revolutionary 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, and, growing like an avalanche, advances on the capital, until a successful1 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 insurgent I s had long been organised everywhere into volunteer battalions, whose discipline, it is true, was poor, but certainly no worse than that of the remnant I s 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 Intransigent i s and their Bakuninist 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, 401 was here proclaimed a principle of supreme revolutionary wisdom. Bakunin had that satisfaction. As early as September 1870 (in his Lettres à un français )) 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 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 GeneraI 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 n 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, Sanlücar 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 detachment is 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.402 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 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 correspondents 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 preoccupied 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 miles3 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 from Cartagena. The siege precluded any possibility of 1further 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 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 disclosures 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.3 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 fortifications, 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, i.e., the cantonal governments, were formed, these people" (the Bakuninists) "who had spoken so violently against political power, and accused us of authoritarianism, lost no time in joining those governments. And in important cities such as Seville, Cadiz, Sanlücar 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. Thiis is officially established by the proclamations and other documentIs issued by those juntas over the signatures of well-known members of this International.

"Such a flagrant contradiction between theory and practice, between propaganda 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 bourgeoiis 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 figh"ting the Intransigents fired at their own allies, the members of the " (Bakuninist)" InternationalI. Taking clever advantage of our follies, the reactionaries are inciting the republicans to persecute us and vilify us in the eyes of the indifferentt masses; it seems that what they were unable to achieve in the days of Sagasta, i.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 Jerez, 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, activities. 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 politically 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 Sanlücar 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 bourgeoiis 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 anunparalleled example of how a revolution should not be made.

Written in September-October 1873

First published in Der Volksstaat, Nos. 105-107, October 31, November 2 and 5, 1873

Printed according to F. Engels, Internationales aus dem Volksstaat (1871-1875),), Berlin, 1894, checked with the newspaper