Bakunin: The Creative Passion, by Mark Leier, St. Martins Press, New York, 2006. 368 pages. $25-95. Review by Brian Morris.
“Liberty without socialism is privilege and injustice; socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality” Bakunin (p.190).
As I intimated in an earlier review, more than a decade ago I was prompted, indeed provoked, into writing a little introduction to the life and work of Michael Bakunin. My motivation for doing so was that I was not only incensed by the harsh, derogatory and unfair criticisms of Bakunin produced by liberal and Marxist scholars – who dismissed Bakunin as an intellectual buffoon bent on nothing but violence and destruction – but by anarcho-primitivists and Nietzschean individualists who completely repudiated Bakunin’s social anarchism. For such fundamentalists Bakunin was a “leftist” and not a real anarchist like themselves, and was thus best forgotten.
In his admirable study of Bakunin’s philosophy, Paul McLoughlin has already done a great deal to restore Bakunin’s intellectual integrity as a political thinker, underwriting his seminal importance in the development of social anarchism, as well as affirming that Bakunin is less of an historical curiosity than an anarchist whose ideas have a freshness and originality and a contemporary relevance which we would do well to examine and learn from. Complementing this work we now have Mark Leier’s biography of Bakunin – subtitled “The Creative Passion”. It is an excellent biography of the real Bakunin, not the caricature invoked by the likes of Aileen Kelly, Isaiah Berlin, Hal Draper and Francis Wheen – a biography long overdue.
Well researched and full of good scholarship Leier’s biography is written in an engaging style, a style that is informative, insightful and full of zest, as Leier relates the many incidents and events in Bakunin’s colourful and fascinating life. It is thus extremely readable, free of the kind of scholastic jargon that one usually encounters among so-called postmodern anarchists. In fact, Leier’s biography is a delight to read, and at times quite entertaining, although occasionally his quips jar a little, especially if, like me, you have little interest in pop culture, comic strips and the Jerry Springer show.
What is helpful about Leier’s biography is that not only does it offer an absorbing account of Bakunin’s life, writings and political activities, but that it also provides a lot of useful background material regarding the socio-historical context in which Bakunin lived and thought. There are, for example, extremely enlightening accounts of the following: Russian serfdom, the nature of capitalism as an economic system, the Paris Commune, and German idealist philosophy – in which Leier delightfully summarizes the metaphysical ideas of Fichte and Hegel; as well as wonderful vignettes of Bakunin’s contemporaries – Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Wilhem Weitling and Sergei Nechaev. Interestingly though, Bakunin’s more immediate comrades, Carlo Cafiero, Errico Malatesta, James Guillaume and Elisee Reclus – all committed anarchist communists – get no more than a passing mention.
The main contours of Bakunin’s turbulent life are perhaps well known, but Leier treats his subject with an unusual critical sympathy, giving a lucid and balanced account of the key issues and events surrounding Bakunin’s life as a revolutionary anarchist. There are thus poignant discussions, by no means uncritical, of Bakunin’s relationship with his immediate family, as well as his young wife Antonio; of Bakunin’s penchant for secret societies; of the nature and context of his anti-Semitic outbursts; and of Bakunin’s participation in the political insurrections in Dresden (1848) and Lyon(1870). Leier also gives a sympathetic and enlightening account of Bakunin’s many years in prison (1849-1857) – two years of which were spent in solitary confinement in the infamous Peter and Paul Fortress. It was there that Bakunin penned his famous confession to the Tsar.
Throughout Leier’s text there are also interesting insights into Bakunin’s rather flamboyant personality; not for nothing did Richard Wagner and the Konigstein police describe him as a “colossal”. By all accounts Bakunin had a warm, generous and outgoing personality, loved Beethoven’s music, was seriously overweight, smoke and drank to excess, and unlike Marx was generally free of rancour, deceit and political intrigue. Leier affirms that Bakunin, given his generosity of spirit, had no ability as a political intriguer, despite his fondness for secret codes and imaginery organizations. He thus argues that there is absolutely no evidence at all that Bakunin ever wanted, or even tried, to take over or destroy the First International.
Besides providing us with a sensitive and poignant account of Bakunin’s life and activities, as well as of the wider context, Leier’s biography also gives succinct outlines of all Bakunin’s major writings. These range from his early article “The Reaction in Germany”(1842), which had a tremendous impact on his avant-garde contemporaries, to his last work “Statism and Anarchy” (1873). The former article, on reactionary and reformist politics in Germany in the 1840’s, ends with those famous words: “The passion for destruction is at the same time a creative passion”. But as Leier makes clear this did not imply for Bakunin mindless violence or that he was prepared, like Attila and Robespierre, to “wade though seas of blood” – as Isaiah Berlin churlishly put it – but rather it indicated the negation of the present social order (the overcoming of capitalism and the modern state) and the creation of a decentralized society based on voluntary associations. Moreover, as Leier emphasizes, this for Bakunin did not imply some apocalyptic vision – which is how Bakunin still continues to be understood, or rather misunderstood. Leier thus offers a clear riposte to those self-proclaimed postanarchists, like Richard Daly, who, putting new labels on old wine bottles, follow Bakunin’s liberal and Marxist detractors, in seeing Bakunin as lost in some millennial or apocalyptic vision. And certainly, though Bakunin was an advocate of direct action and propaganda by the deed, and had sympathy for Russian brigands, he was never an advocate of assassinations, revolutionary violence or terrorism (unlike the youthful Engels). As Bakunin clearly put it: “Liberty can only be created by liberty, by an insurrection of the people and the voluntary organization of the workers from below” (p.287). This entailed overcoming capitalism, and a complete break with all governments and bourgeois politics – a social revolution. As Leier writes: Bakunin “insisted that revolutionary violence was to be directed against institutions not people, and nowhere did he advocate terrorism or assassination” (p.208). In fact, Bakunin offered warnings against the harm caused by revolutionary violence, and had nothing but contempt for Nechaev’s revolutionary nihilism and Jacobin politics. Bakunin’s “passion for destruction” did not then entail a cult of violence but a call to build gradually a new world free of oppression and exploitation. Bakunin’s anarchism thus implied a philosophy of freedom, morality and solidarity; and the aim of a social revolution was not to kill individuals but to destroy “property and the state” (p.199).
Running through the book, almost like a silver thread, at least for the last two hundred pages, is a discussion of the complex relationship between Karl Marx and Bakunin. Leier, to his credit, tries not to take sides, and seems to act as a kind of broker, intent on bringing together Marxism (authoritarian socialism) and anarchism (libertarian socialism) – or “collectivism” as Bakunin described his own brand of revolutionary or class struggle anarchism. Leier emphasizes that Marx and Bakunin had much in common besides their hirsute appearance; both came from privileged backgrounds and were radical democrats in their youth; both were philosophical realists and historical materialists; both were atheists, but sympathetic to the fact that religion often provided meaning, solace and consolation for the oppressed; both were committed members of the First International; both were essentially anti-capitalists – although Marx and Engels both sanctioned capitalist imperialism in relation to Morocco, India and the invasion of Mexico by the United States – Engels viewing such imperialism as in the interests of “civilization”; and, finally, both remained dedicated revolutionary socialists to the end of their days. All this, despite the animosity that developed between the two men and their political differences. For Bakunin was always critical of Marx’s authoritarian politics.
Director of the Centre for Labour Studies at Simon Fraser University, and author of several books on labour history, Mark Leier is to be complemented for providing us with a readable and very useful biography of Bakunin. Indeed, Leier specifically offers an interpretation of Bakunin’s life and ideas that can be used by anyone interested in anarchism and social change. For Bakunin’s critique of capitalism and the state has lost none of its force, and that today, more than ever, Bakunin holds out a vision of a world of freedom, equality and fraternity against which the “present reality” of global capitalism may be measured and found wanting. Such are the concluding words of this insightful biography. The book is indeed a timely affirmation of class struggle anarchism. It is a pity therefore that the book is only referenced with “notes”, and so there is no useable bibliography or even a listing of Bakunin’s writings.