The fraud of Bakunin

I always suspected that there was something "fishy" about that apostle of freedom and libertarian socialism, the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. Arthur P. Mendel's psychobiography "Michael Bakunin: Roots of Apocalypse" confirmed my suspicions. In fact, it was worse than I imagined!

Bakunin is mostly remembered for his prophetic denunciations of state socialism, made during his conflicts with Karl Marx in the First International. These still play an important part in anarchist mythology (alongside Kronstadt, Makhno and the CNT). However, it's long been known to more dispassionate observers, that Bakunin was - to put it mildly - extremely contradictory. While preaching decentralization, free federation and the immediate abolition of all state power, Bakunin organized secret revolutionary organizations which were super-authoritarian. His real program was for a minority dictatorship over the dumb masses, an "invisible dictatorship" as he once called it. Unknown to most anarchists, Marx actually repaid Bakunin by denouncing *him* as authoritarian!

Mendel's biography shows that there was a basic continuity in Bakunin's political thought, from his pre-anarchist days to his later phase as an explicit anarchist and socialist. One idea that never really left his mind was pan-Slavism. Although Bakunin's pan-Slavism was anti-Czarist (at least more or less), it was nevertheless strongly nationalist and racist. He envisaged a Slavic-Latin alliance against Germany, and often accused Marx of being a Prussian nationalist. Nor was Bakunin's secret appetite for centralized, revolutionary dictatorship anything new or anomalous. It had been his view of post-revolutionary society already before he became an anarchist, and never really left him, despite the libertarian public face. Ironically, Bakunin's political strategy was to the "right" of Marx, rather than to his "left", as would be expected of an anarchist. While Marx supported labour unions and independent labour parties, Bakunin's strategy was to capture and exploit "bourgeois" organizations: the Pan-Slavic Congress in Prague, Polish nationalists, the League of Peace and Freedom, the movement around Mazzini, French and Spanish republicans, the Freemasons... During a visit to Sweden, Bakunin was allowed to meet the king's brother, or the king himself according to some sources (Karl XV). A dangerous revolutionary meeting a Swedish monarch?!

More disturbingly, Bakunin was fiercely anti-Semitic. He never tired of pointing out that many leading German Marxists, including Marx himself, were actually Jewish. Bakunin's anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are the usual ones: the Jews are a race of usurers and merchants, their religion and their god are cruel, they control most of the German press from the left to the right, and once state socialism is introduced the Rotschilds will take over the state bank. These are almost word for word the same stereotypes later used by Nazis to deadly effect. I haven't come across this information before. It might explain why a small group of neo-Nazis, known as "national anarchists", are interested in the ideas of Bakunin. On a more bizarre note, Bakunin connected his vicious anti-Semitism with anti-German nationalism, believing himself to fight a German-Jewish alliance! Even Bakunin's attack on Czarism was essentially nationalist, since he claimed that the Czars were "Germans", representing "the state of Peter the Great".

Mendel also points out that Bakunin lapsed from his revolutionary convictions during his imprisonment in Russia and the exile in Siberia. He began extolling the virtues of a relative, General Muraviev, who was the Czarist governor of East Siberia. However, even here there is continuity. Bakunin somehow expected Muraviev to carry out a revolution from above, to be a "red general", and (of course) to establish an iron dictatorship over the stupid masses, who were ungrateful to Muraviev's modernization of the Russian Far East. Bakunin actually sent a letter to Alexander Herzen, defending Mouraviev from the criticism of other Russian exiles. When Bakunin became a revolutionary again, he still expressed a certain hope that Czar Alexander II would somehow come to his senses, convene a national assembly and lead the pan-Slavist revolution!

Some anarchist.

The above facts do make Mendel's biography interesting. However, there are also some problems with it. The book is above all a psyschobiography, with the author using Freudian or perhaps neo-Freudian categories to explain Bakunin's somewhat idiosyncratic behaviour. Thus, there's a lot of talk about "pre-Oedipal narcissim", "Oedipal failure", "projection", speculations about how Bakunin's sexual impotence might have influenced his politics, etc. There is even an extensive appendix titled "Oedipus and Narcissus". While Bakunin's complex character does invite psychologizing, surely the man was above all a product of the Russian 19th century radical milieu? To some extent, Bakuninism was also a product of the immaturity of the labour movement in some of the Latin countries.

The Freudian approach makes Mendel skip certain episodes in Bakunin's life, such as the details concerning his dramatic escape from Siberia and subsequent journey through the United States. Instead, the author emphasizes Bakunin's infatuation with Schelling and Fichte as a teenager. (I was more infatuated with Bakunin himself as a teenager!) Strangely, the book says relatively little about the Nechaev episode - only half a chapter. Perhaps Mendel somehow assumes that his readers are already familiar with this dark episode, and that it really doesn't need further elaboration. He has a point there, but in a psychobiography Bakunin's almost homosexual infatuation with the young savage Nechaev sounds like "smoking gun evidence" for the prosecutor!

I'm not sure how to rate "Roots of Apocalypse". It contains really damning information about Mikhail Bakunin, but also contain lots and lots of Freudian mumbo-jumbo. In fact, I almost threw the book away the first time I attempted to read it. (I got it for ten bucks.) Finally, I decided on the OK rating. At the very least, the book proves that Bakunin was a complete fraud. But, seriously, is anyone surprised?