WHAT A STATE TO BE IN...
Saverio Craparo
Part II - The 19th-century State and the birth of Anarchist theory
The point of departure for anarchist thinking regarding the role of the State before, during and after the social revolution is undoubtedly Bakunin [2]. However, it must be said that for the purposes of understanding the role of the modern State and possible ways to overcome it, Bakunin's ideas are of little use as they are too closely linked to the needs of the struggles of his time. Unfortunately, certain unarguable statements of Bakunin's have been adopted as cast-iron, untouchable principles of Anarchism, even though they have perhaps been taken out of context with no attempt to interpret their sense. So, in order to free ourselves form the chains of a few watchwords which only serve to distort any political enterprise, it is necessary to clarify a few points.
Bakunin's ideas on the matter developed during the last decade of his life, during his activities as part of the International Workingman's Association and the polemics with its Marxist element. Then his main reference points (strictly linked to the development of the anti-authoritarian group's action) were Italy, Spain, Russia and Austria, to which must be added the German empire, both for its role as the emerging power in continental Europe and for the fact that it was host to the main nucleus of Social Democrats.
Given this situation, Bakunin was immediately concerned with three points:
These points remain unquestionably the most basic and most distinctive features of any concept of Anarchism.
In his urgency to establish the above points, Bakunin (who was convinced that the masses' revolutionary uprising was imminent, thanks to the unstoppable rise f the International) had neither the time nor the opportunity to analyze deeply enough the role that the State had been assuming over the previous 75 years in a slow, contradictory arc, at times hard to make out but nonetheless constant and in some respects irreversible. For him, the State was summed up in Germany or in the autocratic tsarism of Russia. In fact, he did not even consider England to be a true State as it did not meet what he believed were the distinguishing features of the "modern State", that is to say "military police and bureaucratic centralization" [3]. Clearly, from the theoretical point of view, there is a certain distortion resulting from confusing state organizations (or better still, centralized organizations) left over from the past with the modern State, a good example of which would be the United Kingdom or the rapidly-changing French State, even with its centuries-long heritage of centralization.
The bogeyman of the State actually first appeared in Anarchist theory in this conception of a military, police and bureaucratic centralization and this is the source of all future deformations and the inability to produce appropriate analyses. Every evolution of the State was interpreted as a concentration of this centralization, impeding any understanding of new (and not always negative) functions. The result today is that many Anarchists are theoretically unprepared when faced with forms of decentralization and the apparent dissolution of the apparatus of oppression.
Bakunin realized, however, that the (decentralized) English non-State was no less dangerous, though his works on the subject (necessary in order to urge on the revolution which quite rightly needed to occur at the time, and in order to dispel some pernicious illusions) tended to lump together different forms of bourgeois domination without studying too closely the differences between them - even if only to establish the actual conditions of the masses under the various systems. In fact, at times the illusion of democracy was even considered more negative for the development of a revolutionary consciousness among the people.
But Bakunin does always appear to be indifferent to the rules of the society within which the revolutionary struggle has to evolve [4], confirmation of what was said above about this aspect being simply a part of his thought that remained undeveloped.
[2] Leaving aside Godwin's purely speculative position, what Bakunin himself says must be true for Proudhon too: by reason of the fact that he wanted to preserve the family, Proudhon was obliged by a logic that was stronger than his revolutionary peasant instincts to reconstitute and re-establish hereditary property, and also (acting as a counter-balance) the State […]. Mikhail Bakunin, Lettera a “La Liberté” di Bruxelles, in Michail Bakunin, Opere complete, vol. VI, Edizioni Anarchismo, Catania 1985, p. 21.
[3] Michail Bakunin, Stato e anarchia, Feltrinelli, Milan 1972, p. 38.
[4] The 1830 revolution and their new independence allowed the Belgians to give themselves a [...] Constitution [that] fully guaranteed the freedom of congregation and association and none of the various reactionary governments that the country has had to endure has dared abolish this principle of freedom, despite the many attacks over these last ten years on the workers' strikes. Mikhail Bakunin, Istoric'eskoe Razvitie Internatsionala, Cast’ I. Izdanie Social’nojucionnoj Partii. Tom II ] (1873), pp.174-182, in Michail Bakunin, Opere complete, vol. VI, Edizioni Anarchismo, Catania 1985, p. 151.
Next section: Part III - The evolution of the State