Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

Origins Of The Anarchist Movement / 87
sociation, an abstraction which destroys living society. It is the limitation, or rather
the complete negation, ofthe so-called good of everyone, of the life and the rights of
every individual who is party to this "everyone." It is the State, the altar of political religion
on which natural society has always been immolated: a universality which subsists
on and devours human sacrifices, just like the Church ...
The State ...is the altar on which the real freedom and welfare of peoples are immolated
fo r the sake of political grandeur; and the more complete this immolation,
the more perfect the State ...
As I have said, the State is an abstraction which consumes the life of the people. But
for an abstraction to be born, develop, and continue to exist in the real world, there must
be a real collective body interested in its existence. This collective cannot be the great
masses of the people, for they are precisely its victims: it must be a privileged body, the
sacerdotal body of the State, the governing and property-owning class, which is to the
State what the sacerdotal class of religion, the priests, is to the Church.
And indeed, what do we see throughout all history The State has always been
the patrimony of some privileged class: the priesthood, the nobility, the bourgeoisie,
and finally, after every other class has been exhausted, the bureaucratic class, when
the State falls or rises-whichever you wish-into the condition of a machine.
23. Bakul1;n: The lllUS;OI1 o! UI1;versal SUffrage (1870)
In the J 9th century, many on the left saw universal sulfrage as the key to social change. As the workers
outnumbered the capitalists, whose numbers were supposed to be shrinking, once tlley received
the right to vote it was naturally expected that they would soon elect working class parties that
would legislate socialism ill to existence. Bakullin wrote the following piece in 1870 to disabuse everyone
of this misconception. The translation is by George Woodcock and is reprinted from his collection,
The Anarchist Reader (London: Fontana, 1977), with the kind permission of the Writers'
Trust of Canada on behalf of the Woodcock estate.
THE WHOLE DECEPTION OF THE representative system lies in the fiction that a government
and a legislature emerging out of a popular election must or even can represent
the real will of the people. Instinctively and inevitably the people expect two
things: the greatest possible material prosperity combined with the greatest freedom
of movement and action: that means the best organization of popular economic
interests, and the complete absence of any kind of power or political organization-since
all political organization is destined to end in the negation offreedom.
Such are the basic longings of the people.