Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/481

Rh central committee, a secret body quite outside the ken of most of the members of the revolutionary association. Bakunin expressly appealed to the example of the Jesuits, saying that the individual revolutionary "must renounce his own will."

As tsar of the secret society Bakunin was, after the Russian model, absolutely irresponsible, and this is why he detested plans for the future. Now it is true that plans for the future are easily formulated when they are no more than a collection of wishes. But from one who arrogates on behalf of his reforms even the right to kill we may demand as a preliminary a precise and conscientious analysis of social institutions and their defects. We may also demand a precise and conscientious analysis of historical evolution, that it may be possible to forecast with reasonable probability the course of future evolution.

Marx was not always just to Bakunin in individual points, but his condemnation of Bakunin's fondness for blind ventures was thoroughly justified.

Moreover, Bakuninian great deeds shrunk lamentably when attempts were made to realise pandestruction. Bakunin was incessantly advocating petty disturbances and conspiracies, the promotion of unrest among peasants and operatives, ferments and revolts of all kinds. These were to keep the revolutionary spirit alive, and to pave the way for the ultimate catastrophe. Bakunin and his adherents spoke of the method as "parlefaitisme" (propaganda by deed).

Bakunin remained the confirmed Russian aristocrat. Everything that he casts up against the Russian aristocracy was preeminently applicable to himself and his anarchism. It is the blinded spirit of aristocracy which conjures up before his vain imagination the spectre of great deeds. It is this same spirit of aristocracy which inspires his willingness to subject the common revolutionists to Jesuitical drill, as a preliminary to making corpses of them. His revolutionism notwithstanding, Bakunin ever remains the defender of serfdom, the lord separated from his revolutionary slaves by the impenetrable wall of the secret society. This secret society business is a mere copy of absolutist aristocracy with its secret police and its secret diplomacy. Bakunin has no inkling that the essential and universal precondition to democracy must be publicity and mutual criticism. Secret societies are an incorporation of the aristocratic spirit with its illusion of