Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/494

468 Slavs with revolutionary ardour is quite comprehensible, far more comprehensible than Marx's antipathy to the Russians, the Czechs, and the Croats. Bakunin's hostility to the Germans was no greater, not even when he was directly attacking them (as in 1862, when he wrote apropos of federation, "that which is endurable to the Slavs is death to the Germans").

Taking everything into consideration, we cannot find that between Bakunin and Marx there existed such an absolute contrast as the Marxists and anarchists of to-day, opposing one another on principle, are apt to contend. Bakunin is more individualist than Marx, more revolutionary, if we think of the longing for revolution as instinctive, or temperamental; Bakunin's mind works more along political lines, and does so because he is not a consistent historical (economic) materialist. Bakunin is notably distinguished from Marx by his approval of terrorism in the form of individual outrages and by his approval of individual acts of expropriation. Marx appeals only to the decisions of the mass, and thereby his policy of course becomes more considered, more mature, and more effective.

It cannot be denied that Bakunin was, to a degree, anarchist in the sense of aimless and turbulent disorder. But Laveleye does him an injustice when he insists that this was the leading factor in Bakunin's views.

Primitive revolutionary feeling, purely negative revolutionism, which were so strongly characteristic of Bakunin, were known also to Marx. In the first volume of Capital the revolutionary mood finds vigorous expression, but we see how Marx is endeavouring to bridle it, and to transform it into positivist dispassionateness. Bakunin could never look on things so impersonally as did Marx, for in the Russian the sentiments of the hunted refugee, the injured outlaw, continually found expression. Marx could be impassioned on occasions, as in his defence of the Paris commune, but when he was impassioned he was strong. Bakunin's excitement betrays weakness.

Bakunin is a revolutionary, Marx a statesman and tactician. Marx was more nice in his methods. Bakunin did not see through Nečaev until his friends remonstrated and the scandal had become notorious. At Prague, again, in 1848, Bakunin was only playing at revolution. Herzen is quite right in his judgment here, and Kropotkin really agrees with Herzen, so