Page:Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin - Modern Science and Anarchism (1912).pdf/66

 over the recruiting system of the French and over the rottenness of the second Napoleonic Empire approaching a evolution which would have benefitted mankind, if it were not hindered by the German invasion.

In the Latin countries, then, the lesson of the Paris and the Carthagena Communes laid the foundation for the development of Anarchy. And the authoritarian tendencies of the General Council of the International Working Men's Association, which soon became evident and worked fatally against the unity of action of the great Association, still more reinforced the Anarchist current of thought. The more so as that Council, led by Marx, Engels, and some French Blanquist refugees—all pure Jacobinists—used its powers to make a coup d'état in the International. It substituted in the programme of the Association Parliamentary political action in lieu of the economic struggle of labour against Capital, which hitherto had been the essence of the International. And in this way it provoked an open revolt against its authority in the Spanish, Italian, Jurassic, and East Belgian Federations, and among a certain section of the English Internationalists.

In Mikhail Bakunin, the Anarchist tendency, now growing within the International, found a powerful, gifted, and inspired exponent; while round Bakunin and his Jura friends gathered a small circle of talented young Italians and Spaniards, who further developed his ideas. Largely drawing upon his wide knowledge of history and philosophy, Bakunin established in a series of powerful pamphlets and letters the leading principles of modern Anarchism.

The complete abolition of the State, with all its organisation and ideals, was the watchword he boldly proclaimed. The State has been in the past a historical necessity, which grew out of the authority won by the religious castes. But its complete extinction is now, in its turn, a historical necessity, because the State represents the negation of liberty, and spoils even what it undertakes to do for the sake of general well-being. All legislation made within the State, even when it issues from the so-called universal suffrage, has to be repudiated, because it always has been mode with regard to the interests of the privileged classes. Every nation, every region, every commune must be absolutely free to organise itself, politically and economically, as it likes, so long as it is not a menace to its neighbours. "Federalism" and "autonomy" are not enough. These are only